French actor Gérard Depardieu is denying allegations he engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior with 13 women.
According to a report by Mediapart, the French investigative news source, Depardieu behaved inappropriately while making eleven of his films over an eighteen-year period, from 2004 to 2022. They include Big House, Dumas, and Marseille, the Netflix crime series.
The report claims that Depardieu’s victims were subjected to “a hand on their buttock, between the legs, or on their thighs or stomach; as well as obscene sexual propositions, and sometimes insistent groaning.
” Mediapart pointed out the “asymmetry between, on the one hand, often young, precarious women, starting their career, and on the other, a world-famous actor, whose mere presence sometimes makes it possible to finance the film.
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In his defense, the Parisian law firm Cabinet Temime said some of the accusations were based on “very subjective assessments and/or moral judgments” and that Depardieu is formally denying “all the charges likely to fall under criminal law.”
This is not the first time the 74-year-old actor has been the subject of sexual accusations. In 2018, actress Charlotte Arnould filed rape charges against Depardieu in 2018, accusing him of assaulting her on two occasions that year.
The case has not yet been decided in French courts.
Several directors and producers also came to Depardieu’s defense, saying they had no knowledge of his activities, which had long been the subject of rumors and social-media postings. But, according to Mediapart, the director Fabien Onteniente had allegedly warned Depardieu about “getting heavy with the girls” during the shooting of his 2013 film Turf. Onteniente confronted Depardieu, telling him “Don’t start that again, it’s over! Behave yourself.”
Depardieu is perhaps best known for his appearances in such films as Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1998). He won a Golden Globe for his performance in Green Card (1990).
Mediapart’s editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel was himself in the news last week after he accused director-actress Maïwenn Le Besco of assaulting him in a Paris restaurant, purportedly because Plenel had written unfavorably of her ex-husband Luc Besson, also accused of sexual assault.
