Kevin Spacey wants his career back—but Hollywood is skeptical

On Wednesday, Kevin Spacey is due in a London court to face accusations, by four unnamed men, of sexual assault.

Without a doubt, he would much rather be in Hollywood.

“I know there are a lot of people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London,” Spacey told Germany’s ZEIT magazine earlier month. “The second that happens, they’re ready to move forward.”

But film industry sources told The Post they’re not so sure Spacey will be welcomed back with open arms even if he is found not guilty.

“I can’t imagine anyone hiring him,” a Hollywood film executive told The Post. “What he’s accused of is so dicey. Is he guilty? I don’t know. He’s a talented actor but he is such tarnished goods.

“If he is guilty of a crime, he should never work again; if he is innocent, I feel bad for the guy,” the exec added. “But in the eyes of Hollywood, you are better off not hiring Kevin Spacey.

“It will be tough for him to rebuild a studio career, though he might be able to do B-movies.”

In fact, Spacey has two low-budget movies slated for release in August.

One is the British film “Control,” in which the self-driving car of a government official is remotely hijacked while she is behind the wheel. Spacey is the disembodied voice of the hijacker.

UK-based director Gene Fallaize actually wrote the role for Spacey.

“I felt that [having him doing a voiceover] was the only way to get him as an actor,” Fallaize told The Post. “He can do it from anywhere in the world. On set, people have expectations of what you can provide.”

What studio bigs view as a liability, Fallaize sees as an asset. “If we had cast somebody else, the movie may have gone into the ether,” he said. “And there’s a morbid curiosity about … what the guy from ‘House of Cards’ is currently up to.”

A second project, “Peter Five Eight,” is scheduled for the same month, and co-stars Rebecca DeMornay as a small-town real estate agent. Spacey is a charismatic PI-type who shows up in town, seeking information about her for his shadowy boss.

Director Michael Zaiko Hall, whose movie was an American production, acknowledged that attracting Spacey to his noir-ish melodrama would have been a long shot before the actor’s scandals.

“I would not normally have access to a double Oscar winner at this budget,” he told The Post. “Some people will have a negative view of the film because of how they view Kevin. But we thought Kevin was the perfect Peter and we elected to take some of the bad attention. On set, Kevin was punctual, prepared and full of ideas. By the end of the production, he and Rebecca were great friends who traded paperback books with each other.”

Spacey previously denied the charges involving four men in the UK, which allegedly took place between 2001 and 2013. Two of the men allege they were subjected to non-consensual sex with Spacey. The actor served as artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre from 2004 to 2015 and maintains a home in the city.

 Last year, a New York jury ruled that Spacey did not molest “Rent” actor Anthony Rapp in the 1980s — one of several similar accusations, all denied, lobbied against the actor. In 2019, a man who had accused Spacey of sexually assaulting him three years earlier dropped his lawsuit against the actor.

“The moment scrutiny is applied, these things fall apart,” Spacey told Zeit. “That’s what happened in the Rapp trial, and that’s what will happen in this case.”

But as the sexual assault claims were piling up, Spacey lost TV and film projects and was dropped by his publicist, manager and agent.

Now, one Hollywood crisis manager told The Post of Spacey, “There are opportunities to capture some audiences, but he’s at the floor with a very low ceiling. There is a cap on the upside. It is not helped by his lack of contrition and the creepy video he made.”

Spacey released a trifecta of bizarre Christmas-time videos between 2018 and 2020. In all three, he played his Frank Underwood character from “House of Cards” and, in the last one, he said: “Listen, a lot of people have reached out to me this past year and have shared their own struggles. And my ability to be there for them has really only been possible because of my own difficulties.”

One veteran director — who said he does not see big Hollywood studios touching Spacey —figures the actor nonethtless has options besides the small Stateside movies.

“You can get kicked out of Hollywood and still have a career in Europe. He’s an actor with a worldwide name and face,” the director said. “There might be a market that has nothing to do with Hollywood — say, Germany or France or South America — which would be welcoming to Kevin Spacey.”

Indeed, earlier this year Spacey had a role in the Italian film “The Man Who Drew God.”

At least one Hollywood director, whose movies have a bit of a dark side, would like to see Spacey return to Hollywood.

“He’s amazingly talented,” the dark-side director told The Post. “I would f–king love to see him come back. But … it’s a third-rail situation. Whether he is convicted of anything or not, it’s the sort of thing that makes him radioactive.”