Thirteen women accuse Gerard Depardieu of sexually assaulting them on set
The veteran French screen actor being investigated for rape faces new claims by actors, extras and staff on the locations of 11 films.
Thirteen women have claimed that they were sexually groped or verbally abused by Gerard Depardieu, the veteran French screen actor who is already under police investigation for alleged rape.
The allegations by actors, extras and staff on the locations of 11 films released between 2004 and 2022 include claims of groping, grabbing and sexual harassment that was allegedly tolerated by people handling the now 74-year-old star, according to an investigation by the Mediapart news site.
“Three of these women have told their stories to the French justice system, though none has made a formal complaint. Some gave up on doing so, others did not even consider it,” Mediapart said.
“The reason was the feeling that their word would carry little weight against this ‘giant of French cinema’. And that doing so could even mean the end of their careers.”
Representing Depardieu, the Temime law firm, founded by Herve Temime, a celebrated trial lawyer who also represented Roman Polanski, the director who is still wanted in California on rape charges stemming from the 1970s, said the French star “formally denies all of the accusations that could be subject to criminal law”.
Depardieu was notified in 2020 that he faced rape charges after the actor Charlotte Arnould reported an alleged assault at the actor’s home. The case was dropped then reopened by prosecutors.
Since the advent in Hollywood of the MeToo movement, Depardieu has been regularly cited as an example of behaviour by stars that was long tolerated in the French film world.
His lawyers said that he “does not intend to address” the new claims “which appear to mix very diverse topics, including some very subjective appreciations and/or moral judgments”.
Sarah Brooks, an American actor who at the age of 20 in 2015 appeared the Netflix series Marseille alongside Depardieu, said he “put his hand down her shorts while making a ‘strange, loud groaning’ noise,” Mediapart said. He persisted despite her objections to others on the set, she claimed.
Brooks told Mediapart: “He replied: ‘Huh, I thought you wanted to succeed in cinema.’ Everyone laughed, and so he then carried on. I felt awful, it was so humiliating.” The report added: “Given the hilarity that greeted the episode, Sarah Brooks said she had ‘not even tried to alert’ the production team.”
Helene Darras, a drama school student working as an extra on the comedy Disco in 2008, claimed that the actor had grabbed her and “ended up putting his hand on my bum in an insistent way” and suggested they “went to his dressing room”.
Fabien Onteniente, the director, said he had been warned that Depardieu was “getting heavy with the girls” on the set.
“I concluded from this that he must have had a wandering hand, given how he behaved while waiting for takes, being clingy and laughing loudly,” he said.
Another former extra said the actor had “put his hand under [her] dress” and “tried to get into [her] knickers” while shooting a 2015 film called The Box.
“I didn’t dare say anything and I waited for it to pass. At the age of 26 I couldn’t make an enemy of casting directors,” she said.
Mediapart quoted witnesses corroborating the reported incidents, but apart from Onteniente, filmmakers and producers including Olivier Dahan, Alain Goldman and Fabio Conversi denied seeing any misconduct on their sets.
The Paris prosecutor has not opened any new case on Depardieu, his office said. Long described as the “wild man” of French cinema, Depardieu has remained active as something of a national treasure despite a longstanding reputation for excess, including incidents involving alcohol.
After the Ukraine invasion last year he ended a love affair with Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, had given him Russian nationality and residence in 2013.
The Times
Syrian officials face arrest for journalists’ murder
French judges are expected to issue arrest warrants for senior political and military officials from the Assad regime after prosecutors broadened their inquiry into the assassination of a reporter and a photographer.
NASA upgrades risk of ‘city-killer’ asteroid hitting earth
The threat level of asteroids usually goes down with time, however the danger posed by 2024 YR4 has been increasing since it was discovered in December.