Kevin Spacey trial kicked off with a man who accused the disgraced actor of grabbing him by the crotch at the Public Theater in 1981

• Kevin Spacey is currently standing trial in NYC in a civil lawsuit involving a sexual assault claim.
• Fellow actor Anthony Rapp claims Spacey touched him inappropriately when Rapp was 14 years old.

Testimony in the civil sexual assault trial against Kevin Spacey kicked off Friday as a retired entertainment industry professional took the stand and accused the actor of groping him in his office in 1981.

Spacey is currently defending himself against a lawsuit from fellow actor Anthony Rapp, who alleges Spacey sexually assaulted him at a party in 1986 when Rapp was 14 years old.

Rapp first made the accusations in a 2017 BuzzFeed News article, claiming that Spacey grabbed his buttocks, lifted him onto a bed, and laid down on him before Rapp was able to wriggle away and escape.

Rapp wants Spacey to pay him $40 million in damages.

As Spacey looked on, Andrew Holzman gave his testimony on Friday, sharing a similar allegation of being touched inappropriately by Spacey when Holzman was 27 and Spacey was 20.

Holzman was working as the film program coordinator for the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1981 when he alleged Spacey came into his office at the Public Theater one day and grabbed him by the crotch.

Sometime in the summer of 1981, he recalled Spacey entering his office while he was on the phone and taking a seat at a spare desk.

When he got off the phone, both he and Spacey got up from their respective seats and Holzman testified that he noticed Spacey had a "very clear, large erection" through his jeans.

Holzman said Spacey then walked over to his desk without saying anything, grabbed him by the crotch, and lifted him onto the desk, where he felt Spacey's erection near his own groin.

"I knew I screamed things like, 'What are you doing? Get off me!'" Holzman recalled in court.

After a few moments, Holzman says Spacey relented and stormed out of the room, saying "absolutely nothing."

When Spacey looked at him, Holzman said it seemed like he was "very angry" and said the situation was a "little scary."

"The look in his eyes, it was like I had done something wrong," Holzman said.

After Spacey left his office, Holzman said he sat in silence with the door closed for several minutes, trying to process what happened.

"I sat there in complete shock, shaking. I didn't know what had just happened," he said. "I replayed it in my mind ... did I do anything to bring it on?"

Initially, he said he feared that Spacey might return, or worse — report him and claim that he had been the one who came onto Spacey.

When he cooled down though, he decided against telling anyone at work about the attack and says he never saw Spacey at the theater again.

Holzman said he told certain friends about the encounter over the years, if he became comfortable with them, and Spacey came up in conversation. In 2017, during the MeToo movement, he wrote about his allegations in a Facebook post that was only viewable by his friends.

One of Spacey's attorneys, Chase Scolnick, tried to pick apart Holzman's story, zeroing in on the claim that Holzman never saw Spacey again at the theater.

Scolnick described how Spacey continued to work at the theater after the incident, as a roving assistant of sorts and filling in for the switchboard — which was located right at the front of the employee entrance that Holzman used every day. But Holzman maintained that he never saw Spacey again.

Scolnick also questioned if Holzman would have known who Spacey was at the time, since Spacey was still an unknown actor.

Holzman said he wasn't sure how he knew Spacey, who had a small part in a production of Henry IV that the theater was putting on at the time, but said it could have been an introduction somewhere in the office, or through his picture in a production program.

Scolnick showed several pages of a playbill for Henry IV, which showed no photos of Spacey. However, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan interrupted this line of questioning, asking Holzman if he was sure these pages were the full program. Holzman said he wasn't sure.

Holzman admitted that his memory is a little fuzzy about how the incident kicked off but says he's crystal clear about what Spacey came over to do to him.

"The bottom line is, I know it happened ... and that is a memory I can never forget," Holzman said.

The trial paused for a 15-minute break after Holzman's testimony, after which Rapp was seen walking to the bathroom with tears in his eyes.

Rapp was the first to publicly accuse Spacey of sexual misconduct, but it would lead to several other men coming forward with similar allegations.

Spacey was fired from his Netflix show "House of Cards" in the wake of Rapp's accusation, and digitally edited out of his role in the film "All the Money in the World."

He is set to go on trial in the UK on charges of sexual assault in June. Spacey has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which center on three men's claims.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the year Rapp alleges Spacey sexually assaulted him. Rapp says Spacey assaulted him in 1986.