Gérard Depardieu to Stand Trial Over Sexual Assault Allegations
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French actor Gérard Depardieu will stand trial in October on charges of sexual assault brought by two women who claim the Green Card and Cyrano de Bergerac star assaulted them on set of the film The Green Shutters in 2021, the Paris Public Prosecutor said on Monday.
French police briefly detained Depardieu for questioning on Monday morning. In a note following Depardieu’s release, the prosecutor’s office said the actor was given a summons to appear before the criminal court “for sexual assaults likely to have been committed in September 2021 against two victims, on the set of the film The Green Shutters.”
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Multiple media sources, including Agence France-Presse (AFP) and BFM-TV, reported that the 75-year-old actor has been accused by two separate women of sexual assault. The alleged incidents reported occurred in 2021 — when Depardieu was shooting French film Les Violets vertes (The Green Shutters) — and in 2014 during the making of TV movie Le Magicien et les Siamois (The Magician and the Siamese).
The Paris Public Prosecutor made no mention of allegations related to the 2014 film shoot.
Another assault case against Depardieu, involving allegations of two acts of rape dating back to 2018 brought by actress Charlotte Arnould, is still making its way through the French courts. French prosecutors dismissed a different complaint, filed by French actress Hélène Darras, in January, citing the statute of limitations for the alleged crime, which Darras said occurred on the set of Fabien Onteniente’s film Disco in 2007.
Last April, in an in-depth report published by French investigative news website Médiapart, 13 women accused Depardieu of sexually inappropriate behavior. He is also the target of a complaint from Spain, where journalist and writer Ruth Baza has accused him of having raped her in 1995.
The actor has denied all allegations against him, going as far as to publish an open letter in the French newspaper Le Figaro last October denouncing what he termed a “lynching” carried out by a “court of the media.”
Despite the allegations, Depardieu still has his defenders. After a documentary expose on the French star, called The Fall of the Ogre aired on French TV last December, sparking widespread outrage, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was a “big admirer” of the actor and that Depardieu “makes France proud.”
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Depardieu’s lawyer for comment.
Kevin Dolak contributed to this story.
April 29, 11:30 a.m. Updated that Depardieu has been released from custody.
12:20 p.m. Updated that Depardieu will stand trial in October.
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