The woman, 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.
She alleged that he groped her “waist and stomach, moving up to [her] breasts” and made obscene comments before his bodyguards removed him.
The second woman has alleged Depardieu groped her “all over” and made “inappropriate” remarks on the set of 2015 film Le Magicien et les Siamois (The Magician and the Siamese), she told the regional newspaper Le Courrier de l’Ouest.
Depardieu already faces a rape charge, as well as claims of assault from more than a dozen women. He strenuously denies any wrongdoing.
“Never ever have I abused a woman,” Depardieu wrote in Le Figaro newspaper in October.
In 2020, police charged Depardieu with rape and sexual assault after the actress Charlotte Arnould alleged that he raped her in 2018, when she was 22.
Another sexual assault complaint filed last year by the actress Hélène Darras, who said that Depardieu groped and propositioned her during a 2007 film shoot, has been dropped for being past the statute of limitations.
The Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza said in December that she had filed a criminal complaint in her home country against Depardieu, alleging he raped her in 1995 in Paris.
Despite the events having passed the statute of limitations, she said she decided to file her complaint in the hope that it would “help other people” to do the same.
Obscene comments
Debate on whether to show Depardieu’s films intensified late last year after a television report showed the actor repeatedly making obscene comments in the presence of a female interpreter during a 2018 trip to North Korea.
His wax sculpture was hurriedly removed from the Musée Grévin waxwork museum in Paris and Canada’s Quebec province stripped him of its top honour.
The actress Anouk Grinberg, a co-star with Depardieu on The Green Shutters, has described how she and others on set were “treated to his salacious nonsense from morning to night”.
She told AFP: “When film producers hire Depardieu on a film, they know they are hiring an aggressor.”
Grinberg said that producers of The Green Shutters had supposedly appointed someone to deal with harassment issues but the person did nothing.
In December, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, sparked uproar when he defended the actor as innocent until proven guilty and insinuated that he was the victim of a “manhunt”.
Macron said late last year: “He’s an immense actor, a genius of his art. He makes France proud.”
Mr Macron later said that he should have placed more emphasis on the importance of women speaking out.
The French film industry has been accused of being slow to react to sexism or abuse in its midst, after a string of male actors and directors recently faced complaints of abuse.
