Hollywood stars have begun campaigning for Kevin Spacey to resume his acting career “after seven years of exile”.

Sharon Stone, Liam Neeson and Stephen Fry are among the names speaking up for the Oscar-winner following the release of a Channel 4 documentary levelling fresh allegations against 64-year-old Spacey, which he denies.

The Oscar-winning actor was one of Hollywood’s biggest names when allegations of sexual misconduct were made in 2017, leading Netflix to cut all ties with him at the height of his House of Cards fame.

Despite being acquitted of numerous sexual offences after a trial in London, and winning a US civil lawsuit in which he was accused of making an unwanted sexual advance, Spacey said he still feels ostracised from the industry.

Basic Instinct star Stone told the Telegraph: “I can’t wait to see Kevin back at work. He is a genius. He is so elegant and fun, generous to a fault, and knows more about our craft than most of us ever will.”

The 66-year-old said it was clear aspiring actors had “wanted and want to be around him”.

She added: “It’s terrible that they are blaming him for not being able to come to terms with themselves for using him and negotiating with themselves because they didn’t get their secret agendas.”

Taken and Star Wars actor Neeson, 71, told the paper: “Kevin is a good man and a man of character. Personally speaking, our industry needs him and misses him greatly.”

British actor and writer Fry said Spacey had been both “clumsy and inappropriate” on many occasions, but to “devote a whole documentary to accusations that simply do not add up to crimes… how can that be considered proportionate and justified?”

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The 66-year-old said Spacey’s reputation had been “wrecked”, adding: “Surely it is wrong to continue to batter a reputation on the strength of assertion and rhetoric rather than evidence and proof?

“Unless I’m missing something, I think he has paid the price.”

A spokesperson for Channel 4 said: “Spacey Unmasked is an important film exploring the balance of power and inappropriate behaviour in a work environment, aiming to give a voice to those who have previously been unable to speak out.”

Spacey won two Academy Awards as best supporting actor for The Usual Suspects in 1996 and best actor in 2000 for American Beauty, which also scored him a BAFTA for leading actor.

Last year, Spacey was found not guilty by a jury of nine sexual offences alleged by four men between 2001 and 2013 after a trial in London.

He also won a US civil lawsuit in October 2022, after being accused of an unwanted sexual advance at a party in 1986.

Spacey says he has struggled to get work despite his acquittals, branding his experience a “life sentence”.

Houston Astros pitcher Ronel Blanco, who was ejected from Tuesday’s game after umpires found a foreign substance on his glove, has been suspended 10 games by MLB, it was announced Wednesday.

Blanco also was fined an undisclosed amount. Astros general manager Dana Brown said that the right-hander will not appeal, meaning it becomes effective Wednesday night as the Astros continue their series vs. Oakland.

Brown said Blanco and his agent initially thought about appealing the suspension, but they determined that they want to “move forward” and “get back out there.”

“Ronel Blanco is a good human being, a good dude and he’s worked his butt off to get into the starting rotation,” Brown said. “I think he sees it as, ‘Look, I don’t want to be out. I don’t want to extend this any longer. I want to get back to the business of pitching.'”

Third-base umpire Laz Diaz ejected Blanco after a check of his glove before he threw a pitch in the fourth inning. His glove was confiscated and was sent to the commissioner’s office.

“I felt something inside the glove,” first-base umpire Erich Bacchus said. “It was the stickiest stuff I’ve felt on a glove since we’ve been doing this for a few years now.”

Blanco denied using an illegal substance.

“Just probably rosin I put on my left arm,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “Maybe because of the sweat it got into the glove and that’s maybe what they found.”

Manager Joe Espada added that when he went to the mound he saw “white powder” inside Blanco’s glove.

“It looked to me when I grabbed the glove [that] there was some rosin,” Espada said. “You’re not allowed to use rosin on your non-pitching hand, and that’s what it looked like to me. It was a little bit sticky with the moisture and the sweat, but that’s what it looked like to me.”

Brown on Wednesday said MLB didn’t “get into” what the substance was.

“This was an umpire’s judgment,” Brown said.

Blanco held out his hands and patted them together in front of the umpires while they inspected his glove before he was ejected, and he did the motion again after he was tossed.

“What I told them is, ‘If you found something sticky in my glove you should also check my hands because it should also be on my hand,'” Blanco said. “‘Just check my hand,’ and he didn’t.”

Blanco, who threw a no-hitter in his season debut, allowed four hits and struck out one in three scoreless innings Tuesday. He has a 2.09 ERA this season. The Astros led 1-0 when he was replaced by Tayler Scott.

MLB began cracking down on foreign substances in June 2021.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Attorneys for MLB, the NBA and the NHL expressed strong concerns with Diamond Sports Group’s ability to emerge from bankruptcy during a status conference on Wednesday, less than five weeks after a scheduled confirmation hearing. Their uneasiness stemmed largely from Diamond’s inability to secure a new contract with its third-largest distributor, Comcast, which prompted the carrier to pull Bally Sports channels off the air at the start of May, leaving baseball fans throughout the country — most notably within the Southeast region of the United States — without the ability to watch their favorite teams.

“I think it’s important, from the perspective of Major League Baseball, to understand exactly how devastating it is to lose carriage on Comcast,” MLB lawyer James Bromley said in bankruptcy court.

Diamond has secured multiyear agreements with three of its four other major distributors in Charter, DirecTV and Cox. An attorney representing the company announced in court on Wednesday that it is also “getting very close” to securing a new naming rights deal that would begin in 2025, at which point Diamond’s broadcasts would no longer carry the “Bally Sports” branding. But Diamond has yet to secure new linear cable and digital rights deals with the NBA or the NHL, two leagues that saw their contracts expire at the end of their respective regular seasons, and the Comcast uncertainty continues to hang over all of it.

Diamond attorney Brian Hermann acknowledged that the company is “disappointed” by the impasse with Comcast but said it is “optimistic” a new contract will come to fruition before the June 18 confirmation, which would essentially mark the end of Diamond’s 15-month-long reorganization phase. But Bromley said “everything is up in the air” at the moment and brought up a lack of transparency, highlighting a continued tension between MLB and Diamond.

“As we stand here today, we are just over a month from the scheduled confirmation hearing,” he added. “We have no information with respect to revenue, and we have no information with respect to major expenses. How in the world are we going to be able to have a hearing, which I think is going to be contested, and discovery with respect to the viability of a plan of reorganization when we’re just over 30 days and we have simply no information?”

Diamond entered bankruptcy with 14 MLB teams in its portfolio but shed the San Diego Padres and the Arizona Diamondbacks around the midway point of the 2023 season, prompting MLB to take over broadcasts. Uncertainty over regional sports contracts, a major revenue source for teams, hung over the offseason, particularly with regard to the Texas Rangers, Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Guardians, all of whom navigated it unsure of where they stood in their relationship with Diamond. Those three teams have since agreed to new deals that only cover the 2024 season.

A major step in Diamond’s desire to emerge from bankruptcy was revealed around the middle of January, when it announced it was bringing in Amazon as a minority investor that would enter into a commercial agreement to provide access to Diamond’s services via its streaming arm, Prime Video. But Diamond doesn’t currently possess the streaming rights to any NBA or NHL teams and has it only for five smaller market baseball teams, prompting further questions about the company’s viability.

Bankruptcy judge Chris Lopez approved Diamond’s disclosure statement on April 17, but the company’s hopes of emerging from bankruptcy were dealt a major blow on May 1, when Comcast, which operates under the Xfinity brand, pulled Bally Sports channels off its air at the expiration of their contract. The breakdown stemmed largely from Comcast’s desire to place Bally Sports channels on a higher, more-expensive tier, sources said. On May 7, Diamond sent what it described as an open letter to sports fans urging them to “raise your voices, let Xfinity know you want your teams back on the air.”

Lawyers representing the NBA and the NHL echoed concerns Wednesday about Diamond’s ability to produce a viable business plan ahead of the June 18 confirmation.

“We simply cannot afford to have our next season disrupted by the uncertainty as to whether Diamond will or will not have a viable business,” NBA attorney Vincent Indelicato said.

Added NHL attorney Shana Elberg: “The day-to-day approach of whether or not a professional sports team’s games will be broadcast doesn’t work for us and can’t continue.”

MLB on Tuesday issued a statement in advance of the status conference in which it wrote that Diamond’s restructuring plan would “likely” be “unconfirmable” if it can’t reach a carriage renewal with Comcast and raised a litany of concerns about its restructuring plans. MLB’s attorney emphasized those concerns in court the following day.

“We are sitting here with the nation’s pastime in the middle of its season, and we have … millions of viewers who are simply unable to watch their baseball,” Bromley said. “That doesn’t seem to be an appropriate thing to be doing to give these debtors optionality for any more time. It’s our view that this needs to be solved immediately, and if it can’t be solved immediately we are going to have to take steps to put in alternate broadcasting opportunities. That’s exactly what we had to do last year, and right now we have to completely ramp up because we don’t know what’s going to happen with Comcast and we frankly, once again and yet again, don’t know what’s gonna happen with Diamond.”