The China Mail - Gerard Depardieu: a tarnished French film icon

The 76-year-old has been accused of sexual assault or rape by around 20 women.

On Tuesday, in the first of these cases to go to trial, Depardieu was convicted of sexually assaulting two women during a 2021 film shoot in Paris for French director Jean Becker.

One of the two victims said Depardieu grabbed her, groped her breasts and made "obscene remarks" about wanting to penetrate her. His lawyer said he will appeal.

In 2020, he was also charged with raping actor Charlotte Arnould when she was in her 20s. He denies the allegations.

Depardieu's prolific career spans more than 200 films, making him one of the best-known French faces on the silver screen.

French audiences long appreciated his brash, unfiltered and frequently offensive character.

But this is now often seen in a strikingly different light in the #MeToo era.

- 'Fall of the Ogre' -

A 2023 television investigation entitled "The Fall of the Ogre" revealed images shot five years earlier in North Korea, in which Depardieu can be heard making obscene sexual remarks about an under-age girl.

When then-culture minister Rima Abdul-Malak called the recording of Depardieu in North Korea a "shame for France", President Emmanuel Macron jumped to his defence.

He remained a "towering actor" who "makes France proud", Macron said.

Around 60 film and art figures signed a petition to support the "cinema giant" in 2023, entitled "Don't Cancel Gerard Depardieu".

Ahead of the sexual assault verdict, fellow film icon Brigitte Bardot also leapt to his defence, saying: "Those who have talent and put their hands on a girl's bottom are thrown in the gutter."

While he attended the start of the trial, Depardieu was not in court for the verdict.

He had in April been working on a new film directed by another of his supporters, actor Fanny Ardant, in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores.

- 'Hero with a thousand faces' -

Depardieu was born December 27, 1948, in Chateauroux, central France.

Although his teenage years were marked by delinquency, he went on to discover the theatre in Paris and appeared in his first film in 1965.

One of Depardieu's breakthrough roles came as a violent small-time crook in 1974's "Les Valseuses" ("Going Places") directed by Bertrand Blier -- a film that drew criticism for its on-screen depictions of sex.

The controversy did nothing to harm Depardieu's career. He went on to be crowned with France's version of an Oscar, the Cesar award, for "Le Dernier Metro" ("The Last Metro") by New Wave icon Francois Truffaut.

US magazine Newsweek called Depardieu a "hero with a thousand faces" in 1987, when he was on a successful run that peaked with 1990's "Cyrano de Bergerac" by Jean-Paul Rappeneau.

He began dipping into Hollywood in the years after, with movies such as "Green Card" and "1492" which won him new audiences.

But his reputation took a blow in 1991 -- just before the Oscars ceremony where Depardieu was nominated for Best Actor for Cyrano de Bergerac -- when Time magazine printed an interview where he admitted to rapes during childhood.

There was anger in the French government about an alleged conspiracy to deprive him of the Oscar and Depardieu denied having made the remarks, although Time stood by the interview.

- 'Provocative, excessive' -

While Depardieu's other antics -- such as urinating on board a plane in 2011 -- had once drawn laughs, he now became a liability for film studios.

Pleading before the court of public opinion in an open letter in 2023, he swore that he was "neither a rapist nor a predator".

"I've been provocative, excessive, sometimes crude throughout my life... If when I thought I was living intensely in the present moment, I have hurt or shocked anyone at all, I never meant to do harm and I apologise," Depardieu wrote.

The father-of-three, whose son Guillaume died in 2008, has undergone a quadruple heart bypass and suffers from diabetes that has been aggravated by the stress of the trial, according to his lawyer.

In 2013, he received a Russian passport personally from President Vladimir Putin. But he has criticised Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

V.Liu--ThChM