Paris — French police on Monday detained display screen actor Gerard Depardieu for questioning after two ladies accused him of sexual assault, a supply near the case mentioned. The 75-year-old actor, who has made greater than 200 movies and tv sequence, was charged with rape in 2020 and was pressured to place his profession on maintain final autumn as allegations of sexual harassment and assault mounted towards him. He denies any wrongdoing.
Police had been to query Depardieu over allegations from two ladies that he assaulted them on movie units, one in 2021 and the opposite in 2014, a police supply mentioned, confirming a report by the BFMTV tv channel.
The actor’s attorneys, Christian Saint-Palais and Beatrice Geissmann Achille, didn’t instantly reply to a request from AFP for remark.
Alessandro Bianchi/REUTERS
The primary lady accuses him of getting assaulted her when she was a member of the crew on the 2022 function movie “The Inexperienced Shutters”.
The set designer, who filed a proper grievance in February, informed investigative web site Mediapart that Depardieu grabbed her as she left the set in a personal lodge in Paris.
She alleged he groped her “waist and abdomen, transferring as much as (her) breasts” and made obscene feedback earlier than his bodyguards eliminated him.
The girl’s lawyer, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, declined to offer AFP with additional particulars.
The second lady has alleged Depardieu groped her “throughout” and made “inappropriate” remarks whereas she was an assistant on the set of 2015 movie “Le magician et le Siamois” (“The Magician and the Siamese”), she informed regional newspaper Le Courrier de l’Ouest.
Depardieu already faces a rape cost, in addition to claims of assault from greater than a dozen ladies — all of which he has strongly denied.
“By no means ever have I abused a girl,” Depardieu wrote in Le Figaro newspaper in October.
Police in 2020 charged Depardieu with rape and sexual assault after actor Charlotte Arnould alleged he raped her in 2018 when she was 22 and anorexic.
One other sexual assault grievance filed final 12 months by actor Helene Darras, who mentioned Depardieu groped and propositioned her throughout a 2007 movie shoot, has been dropped for being previous the statute of limitations.
Spanish journalist and creator Ruth Baza mentioned in December she had filed a legal grievance in her dwelling nation towards Depardieu, alleging he raped her in 1995 in Paris.
Regardless of the occasions having handed the statute of limitations, she mentioned she determined to file her grievance within the hope that it could “assist different individuals” to do the identical.
Depardieu had lengthy made headlines for antics resembling socialising with the leaders of Russia and Belarus, acquiring a Russian passport to protest towards a deliberate tax hike in France, and delaying a 2011 flight after urinating right into a bottle that overflowed.
However debate over whether or not to indicate his movies intensified on the finish of final 12 months after a tv report confirmed the actor repeatedly making obscene feedback within the presence of a feminine interpreter throughout a 2018 journey to North Korea.
His wax sculpture was hurriedly faraway from the Musee Grevin waxwork museum in Paris and Canada’s Quebec area stripped him of its high honour.
Actor Anouk Grinberg, a co-star to Depardieu on “The Inexperienced Shutters”, has described how she and others on set had been “handled to his salacious nonsense from morning to nighttime”.
“When movie producers rent Depardieu on a movie, they know they’re hiring an aggressor,” she informed AFP.
Grinberg mentioned producers of “The Inexperienced Shutters” had supposedly appointed somebody to take care of harassment points however that she did nothing.
French cinema has in current months been rocked by allegations that it has shrugged off sexism and sexual abuse for many years.
Depardieu’s case has uncovered a serious cut up in French cinema and wider society, with some defending his proper to “presumption of innocence” and others supporting his accusers.
President Emmanuel Macron sparked an outcry in December when he defended the “immense actor” as harmless till confirmed responsible and insinuated he was the sufferer of a “manhunt”.
Macron later added that he ought to have emphasised the significance of ladies talking up.
Actor Judith Godreche, 52, has change into a number one voice in France’s #MeToo motion after accusing two movie administrators of abusing her as an underage teenager.
Talking within the higher home of parliament in February, she urged the authorities to reform the French cinema business to guard younger actresses from sexual violence.
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