Gérard Depardieu to be tried over sexual assault allegations

Prosecutors have announced that French actor Gérard Depardieu will face a criminal trial in October over the alleged sexual assaults in 2021 of two women on the set of a film.

This follows the news yesterday that the 75-year-old actor had been taken into custody by police for questioning in Paris.

Depardieu’s lawyer, Christian Saint-Palais, declined to comment to reporters other than to say that the actor was no longer in custody.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the actor has been “summoned to appear before the criminal court” after the questioning.

A trial will start in October “for sexual assaults likely to have been committed in September 2021” against “two victims, on the set of the film The Green Shutters, ” the statement said. It did not name the alleged victims.

French newspaper Le Parisien has reported that a 53-year-old movie decorator has alleged that Depardieu grabbed her and kneaded her waist, stomach and breasts during filming for Les Volets verts (The Green Shutters), according to the woman’s lawyer, Carine Durrieu Diebolt, when she filed the complaint to the Paris prosecutor’s office in February.

"He grabbed her, trapped her between his legs and touched her body up to her breasts. She felt completely powerless, incapable of escaping this trap."

The actor previously denied the accusations against him in an open letter published in Le Figaro in October 2023.

He denounced a “lynching” orchestrated by the “media court”.

“I can no longer consent to what I've been hearing and reading about myself over the last few months. I thought I didn't care, but no, I don't. It's all getting to me,” he wrote. “I have never, ever abused a woman.”

A separate case was brought by actor Hélène Darras but was dropped by prosecutors for being past the statute of limitations.

Depardieu has also been accused by more than a dozen other women of harassing, groping or sexually assaulting them. He was handed preliminary rape and sexual assault charges in 2020 following allegations from actor Charlotte Arnould.

In that case, the investigating judge completed his probe on 17 April and transferred the file to the Paris public prosecutor’s office “to review and determine next steps in the proceeding,” the prosecutor's office said yesterday.

Depardieu was long seen as a national icon in France, and the case has divided the French cultural scene. He has been a global ambassador for French film and enjoyed international fame with several roles in Hollywood.