French police on Monday, April 29, summoned cinema legend Gérard Depardieu for questioning over sexual assault claims, with a view of placing him in custody, a police source said. Police were to question the 75-year-old actor over allegations by two women that he assaulted them – one on a film set in 2021 and the other on another shoot in 2014, the source said, confirming a report by the BFMTV news channel.
The first woman accuses him of having assaulted her when she was a member of the crew on the 2022 feature film The Green Shutters. The set designer, who filed a formal complaint in February, told investigative website Mediapart that Depardieu grabbed her as she left the set in a private hotel in Paris, groping her and making obscene comments, before his bodyguards removed him.
The second woman has alleged he groped her "all over" and made "inappropriate" remarks while she was an assistant on the set of 2015 film Le magician et le Siamois ("The Magician and the Siamese"), she told regional newspaper Le Courrier de l'Ouest.
Depardieu already faces a rape charge from 2020 after actor Charlotte Arnould alleged he raped her in 2018 when she was 22 and anorexic. More than a dozen women have separately accused him of sexual assault. "Never ever have I abused a woman," Depardieu wrote in Le Figaro newspaper in October.
Another sexual assault complaint filed last year by actor Hélène Darras, who said Depardieu groped and propositioned her during a 2007 film shoot, has been dropped for being past the statute of limitations.
Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza said in December she had filed a criminal complaint in Spain against Depardieu, claiming he raped her in 1995 in Paris. Despite the events having passed the statute of limitations, she said she decided to file her complaint hoping it would "help other people" to do the same.