Vita gazette – Kevin Spacey, two-time Oscar winner for American Beauty and The Usual Suspects, is at the National Cinema Museum in Turin and has been awarded a lifetime achievement award.

“Cinema coincides with life, while the great art of the past maintained a distance between itself and reality. So, I can only be pleased to give an award, my trust and consideration to an artist who has made the two things coincide. It’s nice that in a difficult moment in his career, Franco Nero granted a part to Kevin Spacey in one of his films. Actors live in the cinema, which makes them immortal. Man is mortal, while the actor we are about to award is immortal and will live for eternity in his films that we will continue to see for as long as we will be allowed to live”, underlined Vittorio Sgarbi.

This is Kevin Spacey’s first public outing since his US acquittal of sexual harassment charges, but he has other ongoing sexual harassment proceedings. “Today, by rewarding me, you are rewarding all the people who have made my career possible,”  he said at the opening of his speech. Then, he threw a real broadside: “The Cinema Museum had ‘the balls’ (called in Italian, ed) to invite me to receive this award”. Spacey then held a highly anticipated Masterclass during which the most important milestones of his career were revoked. “I will be forever grateful to Franco Nero for making me return to the set, for offering me a film when everyone else was scared. The role doesn’t matter; what matters is his gesture, what he did at a particular moment in my life. He called me and said, ‘regardless of everything’, I want you to be in the film, and this not only as a person but as an actor meant a lot”, said the actor again speaking of the first role that brought him back on the set, The man who drew God, secondly directed by Nero.