The celebrity romance that turned into ‘hell’
IT WAS a fairytale romance – the Australian actress, Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Wife star Melissa George, and her dashing French lover. But it has ended in “hell,” with convictions for assault, a bitter custody battle, and an alleged kidnap plot to spirit the couple’s two small children out of France on a borrowed private jet.
And Ms George claims that her career is on the rocks because her ex-partner refuses to let her leave the country with the children to film abroad.
The 40-year-old actress met entrepreneur Jean David Blanc at a Bafta awards party in London in 2012 and the pair quickly became a couple, producing two sons, Raphael, now three, and Solal, now one.
But the relationship came to an abrupt end on Sept 7 last year when Ms George turned up at a Paris police station with injuries to her face and pressed assault charges against her partner.
Mr Blanc, an internet entrepreneur producer, writer and jazz musician, spent the next 48 hours in custody.
A lengthy legal battle began, as accusations flew over who started the fight in their apartment on Place de la Madeleine, and who should get custody of the children.
“It was a love story and then it turned to hell,” Christophe Ayela, Ms George’s lawyer said.
The first court battle – over the alleged assault – ended last month when a judge fined both parties, saying it was impossible to say who started the fight. Mr Blanc also got a one-month suspended sentence. Both parties are appealing.
The second legal battle is in the family courts, which have ordered that the parents get joint custody of the boys and the children spend alternate weeks with their mother and father.
Neither parent may take their children out of the country without the written permission of the other. When Ms George tried to leave for the US six days after the assault last September, police took her and the children off the plane. Mr Blanc, 48, has pressed charges for attempted kidnap.
Ms George declined to comment, but her lawyer denied any plot to sneak the children out of France, saying that he can prove the flight had been planned well before the assault.