(FILES) French actor Gerard Depardieu attends a press conference for the film “Valley of Love” at the 68th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southeastern France, on May 22, 2015. The trial of Depardieu, accused of sexual assault by two women he met on the set of the film Les Volets verts in 2021, is to start on March 24, 2025. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
PARIS — Gerard Depardieu was a titan of French cinema for more than 50 years but sexual assault allegations and a string of instances of lewd behavior have cast a long and dark shadow over what was once a glittering career.
The 76-year-old has been accused of sexual assault or rape by around 20 women. On Monday the first of these cases will go to trial, over alleged assaults during a 2021 film shoot with French director Jean Becker in Paris.
One of the two alleged victims claims Depardieu grabbed her, groped her breasts, and made “obscene remarks” about wanting to penetrate her. He maintains his innocence.
His prolific career spans more than 200 films, making him one of the best-known French faces on the silver screen.
He has taken leading roles in adapted classics of French literature including “Cyrano de Bergerac”, as well as 1990s Hollywood productions such as “Green Card” or the more recent Oscar-winner “Life of Pi”.
French audiences long appreciated his brash, unfiltered and frequently offensive character. But this is now often seen in a strikingly different light in the #MeToo era.
A 2023 television investigation entitled “The Fall of the Ogre” revealed images shot five years earlier in North Korea, in which Depardieu can be heard making obscene sexual remarks about an underage girl.
Even so, some French people still struggle to find fault with a larger-than-life entertainer whose love of food and wine, coupled with classic Gallic looks, helped make him a national icon.
When then-culture minister Rima Abdul-Malak called the recording of Depardieu in North Korea a “shame for France”, President Emmanuel Macron jumped to his defense.
He remained a “towering actor” who “makes France proud,” Macron said.
Around 60 film and art figures signed a petition to support the “cinema giant” in 2023, entitled “Don’t Cancel Gerard Depardieu.”
Outrage
Depardieu was born December 27, 1948 in Chateauroux, central France.
Although his teenage years were marked by delinquency, he went on to discover the theater in Paris and appeared in his first film in 1965.
One of Depardieu’s breakthrough roles came as a violent small-time crook in 1974’s “Les Valseuses” (“Going Places”) directed by Bertrand Blier — a film that drew criticism for its on-screen depictions of sex.
The controversy did nothing to harm Depardieu’s career, as he went on to be crowned with France’s version of an Oscar, the Cesar award, for “Le Dernier Metro” (“The Last Metro”) by New Wave icon Francois Truffaut.
US magazine Newsweek called Depardieu a “hero with a thousand faces” in 1987 as he was on a successful run that peaked with 1990’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” by Jean-Paul Rappeneau.
He began dipping into Hollywood in the years after, with movies such as “Green Card” and “1492” which won him new audiences.
But his reputation took a blow when Time magazine in 1991 — just before the Oscars ceremony where Depardieu was nominated for Best Actor for Cyrano de Bergerac — printed an interview where he admitted to rapes during childhood.
There was anger in the French government about an alleged conspiracy to deprive him of the Oscar and Depardieu denied having made the remarks, although Time stood by the interview.
Antics
Depardieu is the highest-profile figure to face accusations in French cinema’s version of the #MeToo movement.
In 2020, he was charged with raping actor Charlotte Arnould when she was in her 20s. He denies the allegations.
While Depardieu’s other antics — such as urinating on board a plane in 2011 — had once drawn laughs, he now became a liability for film studios.
Pleading before the court of public opinion, he swore that he was “neither a rapist nor a predator” in an open letter in 2023.
“I’ve been provocative, excessive, sometimes crude throughout my life… if when I thought I was living intensely in the present moment, I have hurt or shocked anyone at all, I never meant to do harm and I apologize,” Depardieu wrote.
The father-of-three, whose son Guillaume died in 2008, has undergone a quadruple heart bypass and suffers from diabetes that has been aggravated by the stress of the trial, according to his lawyer.
French authorities are also investigating him for aggravated tax fraud linked to his decision to move to Belgium in 2012 in protest at tax rises.
In 2013, he received a Russian passport personally from President Vladimir Putin.
Although he was once full of praise for Putin and has embraced other authoritarian leaders, he has criticized Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.