Embattled actor Kevin Spacey says a health scare recently landed him in the hospital.
The 64-year-old Oscar winner spoke at the closing ceremony of the 15th Tashkent International Film Festival in Uzbekistan this week, and revealed that he’d experienced an “unexpected” medical emergency.
The “House of Cards” actor said he spent the night out at a bar in Tashkent with a group of filmmakers. He said he didn’t get much sleep before he visited a mausoleum the next morning, followed by a tour of the Afrasiyab Museum in Samarkand. Spacey recalled, “I was looking at these extraordinary murals on the walls, and I suddenly felt my entire left arm go numb for about eight seconds.”
“I shook it off, but I immediately told the people I was with, and we went immediately to the […] medical center.” Per the Sun, Spacey was taken to the Innova Diagnostic Clinic to undergo a series of tests, including an MRI.
In a video posted on the film festival’s Instagram account, Spacey said that doctors had cleared him and that “everything turned out to be completely normal.”
“I am, of course, grateful that it’s not anything more serious,” he continued. “But it also made me really take a moment and think to myself how fragile life is for all of us, and how important it is that we come together, that we support each other, that we do what we can for the next generation.”
In July, Spacey was cleared of all nine charges, including sexual assault, at his London criminal trial.
The case was among several against Spacey amid the #MeToo movement as the actor fell from grace and went largely without work after 2017. He has since emerged legally unscathed in an era that has seen other high-profile figures in Hollywood imprisoned or found liable for millions. Spacey had said he intended to return to acting full-time if acquitted in London.
In addition to the acquittal in the U.K. trial, criminal charges against Spacey were dropped in several would-be cases in the U.S. A jury also sided with Spacey in October 2022, concluding that he didn’t molest actor Anthony Rapp when Rapp was 14 in 1986.
Times staff writer Jonah Valdez contributed to this report.
