More than a dozen ladies have accused veteran French actor Gerard Depardieu of sexual violence, with some allegations going again many years, based on a report from French investigative news web site Mediapart.
The 74-year-old actor, lengthy a star in France whose 1990 movie “Green Card” turned him right into a Hollywood celeb, was already going through a cost of raping a French actress.
Depardieu has, via his attorneys, categorically denied any wrongdoing.
The Mediapart investigative web site reported that 13 different ladies had come ahead to accuse Depardieu of molesting them on the set of 11 movies or collection that got here out between 2004 and 2022, or in areas off set.
Contacted by AFP, the prosecutor’s workplace on Wednesday mentioned it had not acquired any new complaints however that their investigation was ongoing into accusations he had raped French actress Charlotte Arnould in 2018.
The new accusations vary from “a hand in underwear, on the crotch, on the buttocks or on the breasts” to “obscene sexual remarks” and “insistent grunts”, Mediapart reported.
Even when the alleged abuse occurred on set in entrance of witnesses, when ladies complained, crews typically laughed it off, saying it was simply the actor’s means, the investigative web site reported.
Arnould filed her criticism in the summertime of 2018 when she was 22, saying she had been raped twice by Depardieu in his Paris mansion a couple of days earlier.
The actor — a buddy of Arnould’s household who had identified her since she was a toddler — was charged in December 2020 however not jailed.
He has dismissed the costs as “baseless”, and unsuccessfully tried to have them dropped final 12 months.
None of the 13 ladies have filed official complaints, Mediapart mentioned, however three have given testimony to the judiciary.
One of them, who requested to stay nameless, mentioned she did so “to help Charlotte Arnould” and break the silence on such incidents within the filmmaking sector.
She informed Mediapart she was an additional on 2015 movie “Big House” when Depardieu abruptly slipped his hand into her gown and he or she “felt his fingers trying to… reach my knickers”.
After the 24-year-old pushed it again, “he became aggressive. He tried to get past my underwear… I understood he was no longer acting. If I hadn’t stopped him, he would have succeeded,” she mentioned.
Another lady, who additionally spoke on situation of anonymity, mentioned Depardieu repeatedly tried to grope her when she was engaged on set with him on the 2007 Edith Piaf biopic “La Vie en Rose”.
She mentioned she was continuously having to brush him off however didn’t overtly confront him as she feared shedding her job.
“I needed to work, to eat, so I kept quiet,” mentioned the previous actress, who was 39 on the time.
In 1991, Time journal requested Depardieu a couple of 1978 interview in Film Comment journal during which he described his tough childhood and was quoted as saying “I had plenty of rapes, too many to count”.
Asked if he had participated within the rapes, he informed Time that he had. “But it was absolutely normal in those circumstances,” the actor mentioned.
Depardieu later denied making the remarks and threatened to sue the journal, however Time refused to retract the passage, saying the interview had been recorded on tape.
As effectively as numerous French movies, Depardieu has additionally acted in international productions, together with Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet”, Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” and Netflix’s “Marseille” collection.
© 2023 AFP