Who is Gerard Depardieu: Bio, Acting Career, Rape Investigation

Gérard Depardieu. Photo:Super Stars Bio

Gérard Depardieu biography

Gérard Depardieu, (born December 27, 1948, Châteauroux, France), French motion-picture actor noted for his versatility and for his unusual combination of gentleness and physicality. Within a few years of his first big break in the mid-1970s, still in his twenties, Depardieu became the most popular, the most famous and most highly remunerated French actor of his time. In the 1980s, when France came perilously close to losing its film industry altogether, he was one of the two big hitters (the other being Catherine Deneuve) who helped French cinema through a rocky patch by raising its international profile. For two whole decades, Gérard Depardieu was the charismatic Gallic superstar that French film aficionados around the world would flock to see in their millions, whilst at home he was a living legend, energising both the commercial and auteur sectors of French cinema whilst somehow finding the time to indulge in his other two passions, gastronomy and winegrowing.

Gérard Depardieu is a man of the wildest contradictions. His irresistible animal magnetism and bear-like physique suggest a ladykiller of dangerously unpredictable power, but there is also an intensely engaging gentleness to his persona that suggests nobility, innocence and tenderness, a smooth feminine interior that seems to be constantly at variance with his crudely shaped masculine outer frame. Which other actor could take on roles as diverse as Danton, Cyrano de Bergerac and Obélix, and in each case achieve an astonishing success? The French are proud of their monstres sacrés, and in Depardieu they have a man worthy of this epithet - a flawed genius with a blazing talent and passion for screen acting that is practically unsurpassed.

Gérard Depardieu was born on 27th December 1948. The third of five children, he was the son of an illiterate metal sheet worker René Depardieu (referred to as D.D., the name Depardieu would later give to his film production company) and was raised in virtual poverty, in Châteauroux, a backwater rural town in central France. Neglected by his frequently drunken father, the young Gérard had a turbulent childhood and adolescence, frequently getting into trouble with the law through his delinquent behaviour. As a child, he took odd jobs at an American airbase near to where he lived, thereby obtaining alcohol and tobacco which he traded for profit. He left school at 13, barely able to read, and had his first job as an apprentice in a local printers' shop. At school, his main passion was poetry and literature, and he performed in school plays. He was also a keen footballer and boxer, and it was whilst boxing with American servicemen at the age of 14 that he acquired his broken nose.

Gérard Depardieu acting career

Photo: Britannica

The son of migrant laborers, Depardieu received little formal education and at age 15 went to Paris, where he studied acting. He made his screen debut in the short film Le Beatnik et le minet (1965) and began to appear as a bit player in full-length films in the early 1970s. His performance as a young thug in Les Valseuses (1973; Going Places) brought him his first real notice, and he subsequently appeared in such major films as Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976), François Truffaut’s Le Dernier Métro (1980; The Last Metro), Loulou (1980), Le Retour de Martin Guerre (1981; The Return of Martin Guerre), Andrzej Wajda’s Danton (1983), Jean de Florette (1986), and its sequel, Manon des Sources (1986; Manon of the Spring). He starred in Camille Claudel (1989), and in 1990 he won the best actor award at the Cannes film festival for his role in Cyrano de Bergerac (1990).

Depardieu played a wide variety of roles, including both historical figures (from peasants to the French Revolutionary leader Georges Danton and artist Auguste Rodin) and contemporary figures (from composers to thugs). He was notable for projecting a screen image of masculine strength that was nevertheless imbued with gentleness and sensitivity. He acted in as many as six films a year, and by the late 1980s he had become the most popular actor in France and had achieved an international reputation.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, Depardieu continued his prolific acting career. His performances in the French films Le Colonel Chabert (1994; Colonel Chabert), about a soldier who returns home from war to find his wife married to another man, and Quand j’étais chanteur (2006; The Singer), were well received in France. In La Môme (2007; also released as La Vie en rose) he portrayed the nightclub impresario who discovered Edith Piaf. He later appeared as a crime boss in the true-life gangster movie L’Instinct de mort (2008; Mesrine: Killer Instinct), as the titular police detective in Claude Chabrol’s thriller Bellamy (2009; Inspector Bellamy), and as a labour activist opposite frequent costar Catherine Deneuve in the comedy Potiche (2010).

Depardieu also took the title role in several biopics, including L’Autre Dumas (2010; Dumas), about Alexandre Dumas père, and Rasputin (2011). Other movies included Mammuth (2010), Valley of Love (2015), Un Beau Soleil intérieur (2017; Let the Sunshine In), and Mon cochon et moi (2018; Saving My Pig). From 2016 to 2018 Depardieu appeared in the Netflix TV series Marseille, a French-language drama about corruption and politics. He also starred in a number of American films, including Green Card (1990), My Father the Hero (1994), Crime Spree (2003), Last Holiday (2006), and Life of Pi (2012), as reported by Britannica.

Gerard Depardieu was charged with rape in revived case

The Paris prosecutor’s office said Tuesday that French actor Gerard Depardieu was charged in December with rape and sexual assault after authorities revived a 2018 investigation that was initially dropped. The office told The Associated Press that Depardieu was not detained when he was handed the preliminary charges Dec. 16. The prosecutor’s office addressed the charges after the case was leaked to French media.

French media reports said the charges relate to allegations made by an actress in her 20s that date to 2018. An initial inquiry against the star was dropped in 2019 because of lack of evidence but was later revived.

French newspaper Le Parisien and broadcaster BFM TV said the woman alleged that Depardieu assaulted her on Aug. 7 and Aug. 13, 2018 at his home in Paris. The two met when Depardieu led a master class at her school, BFM TV reported.

The actress, who has not been named, first filed a complaint with details of alleged rape and assault in August 2018 in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence. The probe was taken over by Paris investigators but was soon dropped, according to nbcnews.

Depardieu’s lawyer Hervé Temime was not immediately available for comment, but he has previously said that the actor “absolutely denies any rape, any sexual assault, any crime.”

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