The French actor Gérard Depardieu has admitted in court that he grabbed the hips of a woman who has accused him of sexual assault, but said it was to avoid slipping and was not a sexual attack.
“I grabbed her hips,” the actor, 76, told his trial for sexual assault at the Paris criminal court on Tuesday. The head judge noted that this was a change from his testimony during police interrogation when he had denied that any physical contact had taken place with the 54-year-old set decorator.
Depardieu is on trial for the alleged sexual assault of the set dresser as well as alleged sexual assaults of a 34-year-old assistant director during the shooting of the feature film Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in 2021.
He faces up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (£63,000) if convicted. He denies any wrongdoing, telling the court on Tuesday: “I deny all of it.”
Depardieu – the biggest French cinema star to face trial for sexual assault since the #MeToo movement – said: “I grabbed her hips so as not to slip because I was so upset by her, by the heat. It was a Friday – it was the end of a film shoot with a man who was very tired.”
In cross-examination by the state prosecutor, Depardieu later said: “I placed my hands on the woman’s hips to speak to her.”
Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, lawyer for the complainant, asked the actor if he had lied during the police investigation when he told officers he had never touched the woman. Depardieu said: “I didn’t lie. I was following the advice of my [then] lawyer. Now I’m telling the truth.”
The court heard that the set decorator, Amélie, had been working on styling film sets in a building in the 16th arrondissement of Paris on 10 September 2021.
She told the court that Depardieu, who had been seated on a stool in the corridor between takes, began talking to her about the set and complained of the heat in the building. She said he told her: “It’s so hot, I can’t get an erection.” He also allegedly said: “I know how to make a woman come without touching her.”
After he went to another room to film a scene, he returned to sit in the same corridor, she told the court. He asked Amélie why she was on the phone to her “bloke”, she said. She told him she was in fact busy on the phone trying to track down parasols for the film. He allegedly said: “Come and touch my big parasol. I’ll stick it in your pussy.”
Amélie alleged that he then grabbed her hips, pulled her towards him and trapped her between his thighs with great force, and grabbed her body, including her pubis, waist and chest. “He grabbed me by the hips, pulled me forwards [towards him], trapped me with his legs,” she said.
“That’s where I understood the strength he had, he held me very, very hard. I remember his eyes, I saw this big face, red eyes, very angry, very agitated. And he was saying: ‘Come touch my big parasol’, with a crazy look. I’ve never seen anything like that. That phrase is so idiotic; how would I have invented that – it makes no sense to talk of genitals like a parasol.”
She said: “That fear that I felt – what stands out for me is not his sexual desire, but his savagery. It was the fact that he knew I was afraid – I saw his eyes light up with a kind of pleasure in making someone afraid. I remember that savagery. He really terrified me, and that amused him.”
Depardieu denied assault. He said he had been unhappy with Amélie’s work as a set decorator, because a bedroom scene wasn’t ready and was done poorly. He had made comments that Amélie couldn’t even run a bric-a-brac shop let alone decorate a set, he said.
Depardieu said he weighed 150kg at the time and was so overweight he couldn’t possibly have gripped anyone between his thighs. He told the panel of three judges: “I would never put anyone between my legs. You can do a test if you like – with the paunch I have, I can’t do it.”
He said he did tend to make vulgar comments on set, telling the court he could often shout things like “Pussy! Pussy!”
When the head judge questioned that he would actually speak like that on a film set, he said he could: “If it’s hot, if I’m in a bad mood, things always go on too long.”
Depardieu said: “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 Métro. I’ve been told that exists, I don’t know about those types of things, there are so many vices I don’t know.” He said there was no way he would put his hands on a woman’s backside.
He said, however, that he did use crude language on set but just to be “provocative” and to “relax” people. Asked by the head judge if he had said: “It’s so hot I can’t get an erection”, Depardieu replied: “Maybe I said that, yes, why not?”
Depardieu said the media had used the allegations against him to damage his reputation. He attacked the #MeToo movement as well as the women who had held protest placards outside a concert tour he was giving at the time of the allegations. “This movement is going to become a terror,” he said.
Amélie told the court that no conversation had taken place with Depardieu where he had criticised her work.
The trial continues.
