Actor Gerard Depardieu detained for questioning in Paris over sexual assault allegations

French actor Gerard Depardieu was in police custody this Monday after appearing in Paris to give a statement on two accusations of sexual assault, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

According to police sources and those linked to the investigation, Gerard Depardieu presented himself to the French Judicial Police to be interrogated, having been “in police custody”.

Gerard Depardieu, 75, is accused of sexually assaulting two women in 2021 and 2014.

One of the cases involves a decorator, who was part of the film’s technical team. Les Voltes Verts, by Jean Backer, in 2021, and which accuses Depardieu of sexual assault and harassment and sexist insults in a mansion in Paris. The complaint against the actor was filed this year.

Regarding Depardieu’s behavior on stage, actress Anouk Grinberg, who participated in that film, told AFP that she heard “obscene comments” “from morning to night”.

“When producers hire Depardieu for a film, they know they are hiring an aggressor,” said the actress.

The other complaint against Depardieu was filed by a former assistant, who accuses him of sexual assault in 2014, namely for “obscene comments” during meetings at home in Paris and for “sexual proposals” during the filming of “Le Magicien et les Siamois”, by Jean-Pierre Mocky.

Gerard Depardieu, who AFP considers “a giant of French cinema”, also faces three other rape complaints, one of them from actress Charlotte Arnould, and one from Spanish journalist Ruth Baza.

Last December, the France 2 channel showed, on the program Research complementimages captured during Depardieu’s trip to North Korea in 2018, in which the actor appears to make sexual comments to women, about women and about a child.

The broadcast of the program led several theater and cinema personalities to say that they would not work with Depardieu again and was the basis for statements by the French Minister of Culture at the time, Rima Abdul Malak, about the possibility of withdrawing the Legion of Honor from actor.

Depardieu, through his lawyers, made the award available to the Government and declared himself the victim of “a media lynching”.

At the time, French President Emmanuel Macron told France 5 that he was a “great admirer” of Depardieu and ruled out the possibility of removing the Legion of Honor without a court conviction.