13 more women accuse France's Depardieu of sexual violence: report

Another 13 women have accused French actor Gerard Depardieu of sexual violence over two decades, investigative website Mediapart has reported, in the latest such allegations against him.

The 74-year-old actor, long a star in France before 1990 film "Green Card" made him a Hollywood celebrity, has through his lawyers categorically denied any wrongdoing.

Contacted by AFP, the prosecutor's office on Wednesday said it had not received any new complaints, but that their investigation into 2018 accusations he had raped young French actress Charlotte Arnould was ongoing.

Mediapart said Tuesday that 13 other women had also come forward to accuse Depardieu of molesting them on the set of 11 films or series that came out between 2004 and 2022 or in other locations off set.

The accusations ranged from "a hand in underwear, on the crotch, on the buttocks or on the breasts" to "obscene sexual remarks" and "insistent grunts", Mediapart said.

Even when this alleged abuse happened on set in front of witnesses, when the women complained, crews often laughed it off, saying it was just the actor's way, the investigative website reported.

Rape allegation

Actress Arnould filed her complaint in the summer of 2018 when she was 22, saying she had been raped twice by Depardieu in his Paris mansion a few days earlier.

The actor -- a friend of Arnould's family -- was charged in December 2020 but not jailed.

None of the 13 women have filed official complaints, Mediapart said, but three have given testimony to the judiciary.

One of them said she did so "to help Charlotte Arnould" and break the silence on such incidents in the filmmaking sector.

She told Mediapart she was an extra on 2015 film "Big House" when Depardieu suddenly slipped his hand into her dress and she "felt his fingers trying to... reach my knickers".

After she pushed it back, "he became aggressive. He tried to get past my underwear and finger me. I understood he was no longer acting. If I hadn't stopped him, he would have succeeded," she said.

In 1991, Time magazine asked Depardieu about a 1978 interview in Film Comment magazine in which he described his rough childhood and was quoted as saying "I had plenty of rapes, too many to count".

Asked if he had participated in the rapes, he told Time that he had. "But it was absolutely normal in those circumstances," the actor said.

Depardieu later denied making the remarks and threatened to sue the magazine, but Time refused to retract the passage, saying the interview had been recorded on tape.

© 2023 AFP