• Actor Kevin Spacey faces the first of a series of sexual abuse claims dating back decades on Thursday in New York in a trial that may come to overshadow a glittering career on stage and screen that included two Oscars and numerous other top awards.
• The case against the 63-year-old American focuses on accusations by Anthony Rapp, a star of the Broadway musical Rent, who five years ago publicly accused Spacey of sexual assault when he was a teenager.
• In the subsequent lawsuit now coming to trial, Rapp alleges that Spacey – whose real name is Kevin Spacey Fowler – acted to gratify his sexual desire during an encounter at a Manhattan party in 1986, when he was 14 and Spacey 26 or 27.

Tagged: Hollywood