Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey has said that he can "relate" to people suffering from the coronavirus lockdown after his career was brought to a halt by sexual assault allegations a few years ago.

Speaking to Buzzfeed in October 2017, actor Anthony Rapp claimed that Spacey had made sexual advances towards him in 1986, when Rapp was just 14 and Spacey 26.

The story prompted Spacey to come out as gay and led to 15 other men coming forward to allege misconduct against the actor, who has failed to gain any work of note since.

"I don't think it will come as a surprise for anyone to say that my world completely changed in the fall of 2017," Spacey said in an interview with the Bits & Pretzels podcast. "My job, many of my relationships, my standing in my own industry were all gone in just a matter of hours.

"I don't often like to tell people that I can relate to their situation because I think it undermines the experience that they may be having which is their own unique and very personal experience. But in this instance I feel as though I can relate to what it feels like to have your world suddenly stop.

"And so while we may have found ourselves in similar situations, albeit for very different reasons and circumstances, I still believe that some of the emotional struggles are very much the same. And so I do have empathy for what it feels like to suddenly be told that you can't go back to work or that you might lose your job and that it's a situation that you have absolutely no control over."

All active legal cases against Spacey had closed by July 2019.