Gérard Depardieu to stand trial in France over sexual assault allegations

Wesley Stenzel
·2 min read
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The "Green Card" actor has been accused of sexual violence by more than a dozen women; he has denied any wrongdoing.

<p>ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP via Getty </p>

ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP via Getty

French actor Gérard Depardieu will face a criminal trial in Paris this October on charges that he sexually assaulted two women on the 2021 film The Green Shutters.

The Paris public prosecutor's office announced the news Monday, according to the Associated Press. Earlier in the day, Depardieu, 75, was reportedly held in police custody for questioning regarding sexual assault allegations against him.

Representatives for Depardieu didn't immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly's request for comment Monday. According to Deadline Hollywood, an attorney for the actor, Christian Saint-Palais, told reporters outside the police station, "When a person is implicated, inevitably, there comes a time when they have to explain themselves. And so today was one of those days where he had to explain the accusations made against him and which he disputes."

According to Le Monde and other local outlets, the police summons related to complaints filed by two separate women this year. The first was a complaint regarding an alleged 2014 assault that was filed in January, which was not mentioned in the prosecutors' announcement and is presumably not part of the forthcoming trial. The second accusation came from a set decorator on The Green Shutters, who filed a formal complaint in February alleging that Depardieu repeatedly groped her on the set of the film.

"At the end of his police custody at the 3rd Judicial Police District, Gérard Depardieu was served with a summons to appear before the criminal court… for sexual assaults likely to have been committed in September 2021 to the detriment of two victims, on the set of the film [The] Green Shutters," the prosecutors' office said in a statement, per The Telegraph and other outlets.

Depardieu, who made waves internationally in the 1990s with films like Cyrano de Bergerac and Green Card, has been accused of sexual assault and harassment numerous times in the last decade. The actor has previously denied the allegations.

In 2020, actress Charlotte Arnould accused Depardieu of raping her in 2018, and he was charged in her case in 2021. Thirteen other women accused him of sexual violence in a 2023 Mediapart report. The actor denied these allegations in an open letter later that year.

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