French star actor Gerard Depardieu, on trial for sexual assault, told the court in Paris on Tuesday that he was not in the habit of “groping” women.
“I don’t see why I would go around groping a woman, her buttocks, her breasts. I’m not somebody who rubs himself against others on the metro,” he said in his first statement at the trial, in which he is charged with sexual assault on two women during the shooting of a film in 2021.
Depardieu said in response to the accusations that he was “not like that”, adding that “there are vices that are alien to me”.
Depardieu, 76, who has acted in more than 200 films and television series, has been accused of improper behaviour by around 20 women but this is the first case to come to trial.
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He is the highest-profile figure to face accusations in French cinema’s response to the #MeToo movement.
The trial relates to charges of sexual assault during the filming in 2021 of “Les Volets Verts” (“The Green Shutters”) by director Jean Becker.
Anouk Grinberg, a prominent actor who appeared in the film, has backed the two plaintiffs — a set dresser, 54, and a 34-year-old assistant director. Both women allege sexual violence.
Grinberg said that Depardieu had constantly made “salacious remarks” during shooting, and told AFP that producers who hired him knew they were “hiring an abuser”.
The trial, initially scheduled to take place in October 2024, had been postponed due to the actor’s ill health.
His lawyer said back then that Depardieu had undergone a heart bypass operation and suffered from diabetes that was aggravated by the stress of the forthcoming trial.
One of Depardieu’s two accusers, the 54-year-old set dresser called Amelie, reported in February last year that she had suffered sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexist insults during filming in September 2021.
She told French investigative website Mediapart that Depardieu boasted he could “give women an orgasm without touching them” and that an hour later Depardieu “brutally grabbed” her.
The actor pinned her by “closing his legs” around her before groping her waist and her stomach, continuing up to her breasts, she added.
She said Depardieu made “obscene remarks”.
AFP
