Kevin Spacey to receive lifetime achievement award in Italy

An Italian film museum has announced that Kevin Spacey will receive a lifetime achievement award and teach a master class there early next year.

Enzo Ghigo, president of the National Museum of Cinema in the northern city of Turin, said the class and the award honouring Mr Spacey’s contribution to the growth of cinema would take place on January 16.

The event will also include a screening of a Kevin Spacey film, though Mr Ghigo did not say which.

The announcement comes two weeks after a jury in the US concluded that Mr Spacey did not molest actor Anthony Rapp when Mr Rapp was 14, while both were relatively unknown actors in Broadway plays in the 1980s.

On October 21, the federal jury in the New York civil case deliberated for little more than an hour before deciding that Mr Rapp, now 50, had not proven his allegations.

Mr Spacey, 63, had “categorically denied” the allegations.

In a US civil case any allegations only need to be proven “on the balance of probability”, rather than to the criminal standard of “beyond all reasonable doubt”.

Mr Ghigo said: “We are honoured that such a prestigious guest as Kevin Spacey chose Turin and our museum for this long-awaited return to an event with an audience.”

Previous winners of the Stella della Mole Award include actresses Isabella Rossellini and Monica Bellucci, and director Dario Argento.

Mr Spacey filmed his most recent movie, director Franco Nero’s The Man Who Drew God, in Turin.

“Now, among all of the cities of the world, he chose Turin for a master class.

“He couldn’t give us a better present than this,” Domenico De Gaetano, the director of the National Museum of Cinema, was quoted as saying.

Mr Gaetano plans to interview Spacey about his career at the January event.