protagonist of, and actor in classics such as Twentieth century o The last meterprobably the most important living actor in France, has been declared guilty this Tuesday of sexual aggression in a filming. The judge condemns him to 18 months in prison suspended – he must not comply with them – to the registration in the archive of sexual aggressors and the deprivation of his civil rights for two years. Depardieu is the first great actor of the French film industry convicted of sexual crimes in the workplace, a fact in which many see the beginning of something like French.
Depardieu, who has not attended the reading of the sentence on Tuesday, being filming a film in Portugal, sat on the bench for the complaints of sexual assault filed in 2024 by a stage and an assistant to realize the film Green blindsthat they accused him in addition to sexual harassment and sexist outrages while that film was made.
In February 2024 he filed a lawsuit against him for sexual assault, harassment and sexist comments. The second woman, director’s assistant, also accused Depardieu of touching her breasts and buttocks in the filming set and, previously, of harassing her. Depardieu denied “any sexual connotation joke” and any aggression, arguing in sarcastic tone: “I don’t see how I could do it with the belly I have, I don’t surround a person who I don’t know with my legs. I have trouble hugging a woman I love.” The actor later insisted on the same tone: “I don’t see why I would have fun grobing a woman and touching her buttocks and breasts. That’s what the kids do.”
Throughout the trial, he simply acknowledged having grabbed Amélie, the stage, for the hips “not to slip” of his stool during a discussion about the decoration of the film.
Depardieu also denied having assaulted Sarah (modified name), who is 34 years old today. The assistant in the film claimed that Depardieu would have taken advantage of the fact of being alone with her to touch the buttocks, before grabbing her chest again and the buttocks a little later, above the clothes.
The judge has also decreed that Depardieu must compensate the victims for the violence suffered during the trial. During their allegations, the lawyers of the civil parties denounced the multiple attacks against their clients. “Liar, hysterical, go to cry!”, Thus shouted the lawyer Jérémie Assous to Amélie and Sarah, approaching his bank and pointing them with his finger.
One of the lawyers, at the exit of the session where the verdict was read, just the day the Cannes Festival began, said that “it is the end of impunity.” “For four days we do not attend a defense strategy, but an aggressor defended by another aggressor,” said lawyer Claude Vincent, defender of Sarah. “They believed that with their ‘lady’, ‘My dear’, trying to hysteric, they were going to humiliate us. But what they do not understand is that we are proud to be women,” he said.
About twenty accusations
In recent years, Gérard Depardieu has been accused of sexual aggressions for about twenty women, but several procedures have been filed by prescription of the facts. French actress Charlotte Arnould, present in the Chamber during the trial, denounced a violation in 2018. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office has requested a trial against the actor.
He was tense in all his days and his lawyer tried until the last moment to achieve his annulment during an introductory statement of almost two hours. The verbal violence of the defense, as well as that of the accused when he tried to argue his conduct, have also been sanctioned by the judge.
Depardieu was defended at the time by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron. Also this week by the legendary French actress Brigitte Bardot, 90, who assured that the men accused of putting “her hands on the rear of a girl” should be able to continue “with their lives.”
The actor, however, does not close his problems with the justice and the shadow of the abuses he weighs on him for years. The actor also faces accusations of women who have worked with him in filming or in a professional environment. He published the testimony of 13 women who claim “to have suffered gestures or inappropriate sexual statements of the famous actor, of different gravity.”
