Paris – French police detained film actor Gerard Depardieu for questioning on Monday after two women accused him of sexual assault, a source close to the case said. The 75-year-old actor, who has made more than 200 films and television series, was accused of rape in 2020 and was forced to end his career last fall. allegations of sexual harassment and assault mounted against him. He denies any wrongdoing.
Police would question Depardieu about allegations from two women that he assaulted them on film sets, one in 2021 and the other in 2014, a police source said, confirming a report by television channel BFMTV.
The actor's lawyers, Christian Saint-Palais and Beatrice Geissmann Achille, did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
Alessandro Bianchi/REUTERS
The first woman accuses him of assaulting her when she was part of the crew of the 2022 feature film 'The Green Shutters'.
The set designer, who filed a formal complaint in February, told investigative website Mediapart that Depardieu grabbed her as she left the set at a private hotel in Paris.
She alleged he groped her “waist and stomach, up to (her) breasts” and made lewd comments before his bodyguards removed him.
The woman's lawyer, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, declined to provide AFP with further details.
The second woman claims Depardieu groped her 'everywhere' and made 'inappropriate' comments while she was an assistant on the set of the 2015 film 'Le magician et le Siamois' ('The Magician and the Siamese'), she said to the regional newspaper. Le Courrier de l'Ouest.
Depardieu is already facing a rape charge, as well as claims of assault by more than a dozen women – all of which he has vehemently denied.
“I have never abused a woman,” Depardieu wrote in the newspaper Le Figaro in October.
Police charged Depardieu with rape and sexual assault in 2020 after actor Charlotte Arnould claimed he raped her in 2018 when she was 22 and anorexic.
Another sexual abuse complaint filed last year by actor Helene Darras, who said Depardieu groped her and propositioned her during a 2007 film shoot, has been dropped because the statute of limitations had expired.
Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza said in December that she had filed a criminal complaint against Depardieu in her home country, alleging that he raped her in Paris in 1995.
Even though the events had exceeded the statute of limitations, she said she decided to file her complaint in the hope that it would “help other people” do the same.
Depardieu had long made headlines with antics such as socialize with the leaders of Russia and Belarusobtaining a Russian passport to protest a planned tax increase in France, and postponing a 2011 flight afterward urinating in a bottle that overflowed.
But debate over whether to screen his films intensified late last year after a television report showed the actor repeatedly making obscene comments in the presence of a female interpreter during a trip to North Korea in 2018.
His wax figure was hastily removed from the Musee Grevin wax museum in Paris and the Canadian region of Quebec stripped him of his highest honor.
Actor Anouk Grinberg, a co-star of Depardieu in “The Green Shutters”, has described how she and others on set were “treated to his prurient nonsense from morning to night”.
“When film producers hire Depardieu for a film, they know they are hiring an aggressor,” she told AFP.
Grinberg said producers of “The Green Shutters” supposedly appointed someone to deal with harassment issues, but she did nothing.
French cinema has been rocked in recent months by accusations that it has ignored sexism and sexual abuse for decades.
Depardieu's case has exposed a deep division in French cinema and wider society, with some defending his right to the 'presumption of innocence' and others supporting his accusers.
President Emmanuel Macron sparked outrage in December when he defended the “immense actor” as innocent until proven guilty and insinuated he was the victim of a “manhunt.”
Macron later added that he should have emphasized the importance of women speaking out.
Actor Judith Godreche, 52, has become a leading voice in France's #MeToo movement after accusing two film directors of abusing her as an underage teenager.
Speaking in the House of Lords in February, she urged authorities to reform the French film industry to protect young actresses from sexual violence.
