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Kevin Spacey was given a standing ovation Monday night during an event addressing cancel culture in which he performed on stage for the first time since he was found not guilty of sexual assault.
The two-time Oscar-winning actor, 64, performed a five-minute scene from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens at the University of Oxford’s Sheldonian theater, after which he received rapturous applause from the audience. It comes just days after a London movie theater canceled the premiere of Spacey’s first film since his acquittal saying it was “horrified” to be associated with him.
The event in Oxford—where Spacey was once a visiting lecturer—was centered around a lecture given by New York Post columnist Douglas Murray in memory of the late conservative British philosopher Roger Scruton. Just months before his death in early 2020, Scruton had been fired from his appointment as the head of a U.K. government housing body in the wake of a controversial interview with the left-leaning New Statesman magazine, which Murray later accused of being a “hit job” and “character assassination” (the magazine later apologized to Scruton and he was reinstated in his government adviser role).