Dame Judi: we cannot extrude Spacey from cinema history
DAME JUDI DENCH has criticised the decision to remove her “good friend” Kevin Spacey from a film after he was accused of sexual misconduct.
Spacey’s scenes were cut from All The Money in the World, the Ridley Scott film released last January about the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III. Christopher Plummer was then hired in his place.
“I can’t approve, in any way, of the fact that – whatever he has done – you start to cut him out of the films,” Dame Judi said at a film festival in Spain.
“Are we to go back throughout history and anyone who has misbehaved in any way, or who has broken the law, or who has committed some kind of offence, are they always going to be cut out? Are we going to extrude them from history?”
Dame Judi brought up the subject of Spacey when asked to share a fond memory from her career. She chose the time spent shooting The Shipping News, a 2001 film based on E. Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in which the two actors starred.
Dame Judi’s husband, Michael Williams, the actor, had recently died, and Spacey helped her through the grief. “I went to do The Shipping News with Kevin Spacey, and Kevin was an inestimable comfort and never mentioned he knew I was in a bad way. He cheered me up and kept me going,” she said.
Allegations against Spacey first surfaced last year when an actor, Anthony Rapp, claimed he had made a sexual advance toward him when he was 14.
Spacey said he could not remember the incident but apologised for “what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour”.
Other men came forward with claims, including in the UK where Spacey was artistic director at the Old Vic theatre for more than a decade. Police are investigating six separate claims.
Dame Judi said: “I don’t know the conditions of it, but nevertheless he is, and was, a most wonderful actor. I can’t imagine what he is doing now.” She added that he remains “a good friend”.