Film director ‘drugged, raped me’
Police are investigating accusations that Luc Besson, the French film director, drugged and raped an actress in a Paris hotel, in the latest in a string of sexual assault claims to shake the cinema industry in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
News of the allegations broke during the closing ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival, where an Italian actress who says she was raped by Weinstein made an emotional speech and warned that more male cinema figures would be held to account.
Besson, the 59-year-old director of The Big Blue, Lucy and The Fifth Element, has categorically denied the rape claims.
His accuser, a 27-year-old French actress whose name has not been made public, filed the complaint with police in Paris on Saturday after the alleged assault the previous night at the exclusive Hotel Le Bristol in the French capital, according to judicial sources. She told them she had been in a relationship with Besson, who is abroad at the moment and has not been questioned by police, for around two years, but said she felt pressured into sexual relations for professional reasons.
Europe 1 radio, which broke the story, said the alleged victim told police how she ‘‘drank tea, then felt unwell and lost consciousness’’, and when she came round she remembered being sexually assaulted.
Thierry Marembert, a lawyer acting for Besson, said the claims were ‘‘fantasist accusations’’ and that the actress was someone the director knew, but ‘‘towards whom he has never behaved inappropriately’’.
News of the accusations emerged shortly before Asia Argento, an Italian actress, took to the stage at the closing ceremony of the festival in Cannes, where she says she was raped by Weinstein in 1997. ‘‘I was 21. This festival was his hunting ground,’’ Argento told the star-studded audience.– Telegraph roup