Kevin Spacey thanks Italian cinema museum for having courage to host him

Kevin Spacey made his first speaking appearance since sexual assault allegations derailed his career and used a colourful Italian term to thank the National Cinema Museum for having the courage to invite him.

Spacey received a lifetime achievement award from the museum, discussed key roles during a master class and then introduced the 1999 film American Beauty, for which he won his second acting Oscar, to a sold-out crowd in the northern city of Turin on Monday.

“I am truly blessed and grateful and humbled. And my heart is very full tonight toward the National Museum of Cinema for having had the ‘le palle’ to invite me tonight,” Spacey said, using the Italian word for a male body part synonymous with courage, to cheers from the master class audience.

“By presenting this award, they are making a strong defense of artistic achievement and for that they should be applauded,” Spacey said.

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

The sold-out events were billed as Spacey’s first speaking engagements in five years.

After multiple allegations of sexual assault surfaced, the actor lost his starring role on the Netflix series House of Cards and saw other opportunities dry up.

Spacey did not directly address the allegations while accepting the award or during the hourlong class.

But while noting the loyalty of many fans, he said “the bond I share with them will not be easily broken by unrestrained, ever-shifting mobocratic ties”.

He choked up as he thanked his manager Evan Lowenstein for his support, calling him “the brother I never had”.

Spacey said he was also “enormously grateful” to Italian director Frank Nero, who hired him for a role in The Man Who Drew God, which was filmed in Turin.

Spacey will be on hand when the film is previewed later this week in Rome.

Spacey is scheduled to go on trial in London in June on a dozen charges alleging he sexually assaulted four men between 2001 and 2013, including when he was the artistic director at the city’s Old Vic theatre. He has pleaded not guilty.

In October, a federal jury in a New York civil case found that Spacey, 63, did not sexually abuse actor Anthony Rapp when both were relatively unknown Broadway actors in 1986 and Rapp was 14 years old.

The jurors deliberated a little more than an hour before deciding that Rapp, now 50, had not proven his allegations.

Spacey previously faced allegations in Massachusetts that he groped a man at a bar. Prosecutors later dropped the charges.

A judge in Los Angeles in August approved an arbitrator’s decision to order Spacey to pay 30.9m dollars (£25.4) to the makers of House of Cards for violating his contract by sexually harassing crew members.