Kevin Spacey refuses to leave his Baltimore mansion after foreclosure sale
Kevin Spacey is refusing to get out of his Baltimore home weeks after it was sold in a foreclosure auction, the property’s buyer says.
The “House of Cards” actor’s waterfront mansion was foreclosed on after he defaulted on his $20,000 monthly mortgage payments, the Baltimore Banner reported. It was a tab he struggled to settle after a string of sexual assault allegations beginning in 2017 that prompted his fall from grace in Hollywood.
Last month, Bethesda, Md., real estate investor Sam Asgari bought the property for $3.24 million. But weeks after the sale, Spacey still hasn’t vacated the property, Asgari told the Baltimore news outlet Wednesday.
“Right now, he’s refusing to leave,” Asgari said, adding that he’s been forced into negotiations with Spacey’s lawyers. “He’s asking for six months to leave the property without paying anything.”
The two-time Academy Award winner's attorney, Edward U. Lee III, has denied the allegations, telling the outlet, “The accusation by Mr. Asgari is false.”
Lee did not immediately reply Friday to a request for comment.
Spacey originally purchased the 9,000-square-foot property for $5.65 million in 2017. It became his primary residence after he was fired from “House of Cards” that year.
Asgari, who garnered attention earlier this year after purchasing the childhood home of famed Maryland financier Johns Hopkins, sealed his acquisition of Spacey's digs with a $100,000 deposit. Once the sale is ratified by the courts, he could escalate eviction proceedings against Spacey.
Drowning in debt and unable to pay his legal fees, Spacey told Piers Morgan in a June interview that he was being forced to move his belongings into storage.
“I’m not quite sure where I’m going to live now,” he said. According to the Daily Mail, Spacey also put his London penthouse on the market earlier this month.
One of the earliest figures embroiled in the “MeToo” movement, Spacey was first accused of sexual harassment in 2017 by Broadway actor Anthony Rapp — who claimed that Spacey made a sexual advance toward him in the 1980s, when Spacey was 26 and Rapp was 14.
Spacey responded on social media that he did not recall the incident. “But if I did behave then as he describes, [I] owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior and I am sorry for the feelings he has described carrying with him all these years,” he added.
Soon after Rapp’s allegations broke, Spacey was fired from Netflix’s “House of Cards” and removed from the Ridley Scott film project "All the Money in the World.”
The actor has since faced allegations of sexual assault and misconduct from numerous other men — all of which he’s denied — leading to legal proceedings in the U.S. and U.K. He also lost a $31-million judgment to “House of Cards” production company MRC for violating the company’s sexual harassment policy, The Times previously reported.
In 2022, Spacey was found not liable in Rapp’s federal civil suit against him, and last year, a London jury acquitted him on nine criminal counts of sexual assault.
He still faces a separate civil suit from one of the four U.K. complainants, with a trial date expected in summer 2025, according to the Telegraph.
“Spacey Unmasked,” a two-part documentary aired by British television network Channel 4 in May, brought fresh allegations against Spacey from 10 men who were not involved in the London criminal case. The network claims in the documentary that Spacey “said that he had been provided with insufficient time and detail to respond to the testimonies in this film.”
Spacey disputed that claim on X: “Over the last week, I have repeatedly requested that @Channel4 afford me more than 7 days to respond to allegations made against me dating back 48 years and provide me with sufficient details to investigate these matters. Channel 4 has refused on the basis that they feel that asking for a response in 7 days to new, anonymized and non-specific allegations is a ‘fair opportunity’ for me to refute any allegations made against me.
“I will not sit back and be attacked by a dying network’s one-sided ‘documentary’ about me in their desperate attempt for ratings. There's a proper channel to handle allegations against me and it’s not Channel 4,” he continued. “Each time I have been given the time and a proper forum to defend myself, the allegations have failed under scrutiny and I have been exonerated.”
Following the documentary’s release, actors Liam Neeson and Sharon Stone came to Spacey's defense.
“Kevin is a good man and a man of character. Personally speaking, our industry needs him and misses him greatly,” Neeson told the Telegraph.
“I can’t wait to see Kevin back at work,” Stone told the outlet. “He is a genius. He is so elegant and fun, generous to a fault and knows more about our craft than most of us ever will.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
