Depardieu, 72, charged with raping actress
GERARD Depardieu has been charged with raping a young actress, it emerged last night.
The 72-year-old French movie star is accused of raping and sexually assaulting the 22-year-old woman over several days at his Paris home in August 2018.
Depardieu, who found fame in Hollywood films such as Green Card and Cyrano de Bergerac, is said to have been helping the actress – who was a ‘family friend’ – rehearse for a play, an investigating source said.
The allegations against the Oscarnominated actor follow a series of #MeToo complaints against powerful men in the Paris arts establishment who are accused of raping or abusing young models and actresses.
The source said: ‘The woman is a family friend whom the accused is said to have taken under his wing.
‘It was while he was mentoring the woman that the crimes are said to have been committed.’
Depardieu, a father-of-four who denies any wrongdoing, is said to have been made aware of the accusations in late 2018 after the woman complained to her mother.
The alleged victim, who cannot be named, filed a complaint near the southern city of Aix-en-Provence. A preliminary investigation was opened in August 2018, but the case was dropped in early 2019 after investigators failed to gather enough evidence. At the time, Depardieu’s lawyer, Herve Temime, said the actor ‘absolutely denies any rape, any sexual assault, any crime’ and dismissed the complaint as ‘groundless’.
The woman has since relaunched proceedings by acting as an ‘injured party’, which under French law almost always leads to a case being examined by an investigating magistrate.
According to the source, Depardieu was indicted in December for ‘rapes’ and ‘sexual assaults’.
Mr Temime said his client was free on bail, and ‘sorry that this information has been made public’. Elodie Tuaillon-Hibon, for the complainant, said her client ‘requested privacy’.
In 2013, Depardieu revealed he was seeking Russian citizenship after the French government criticised his decision to move abroad to avoid higher taxes. Vladimir Putin signed an executive order granting the citizenship and the pair met in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. At the time, Depardieu said Putin ‘immediately liked my hooligan side’.
The actor, perhaps best known for the 1986 film Jean de Florette, has been in a relationship with novelist Clementine Igou, thought to be 30 years his junior, since 2005.
‘Absolutely denies any crime’