Gérard Depardieu will become the most high-profile French person to stand trial on #MeToo abuse allegations when he appears in a Paris court on Monday.
The actor, a titan of French cinema with more than 200 films and television series to his name, is accused of sexually assaulting two women during a film shoot in 2021.
Depardieu, 76, has faced allegations of rape or sexual assault from more than a dozen women, all of which he has denied, but this is the first time he has appeared in court to answer accusations.
The two women, an assistant director, 34, and a set designer, 54, at the centre of the trial worked on the set of Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) released in 2022, which also stars Anouk Grinberg and Fanny Ardant.
The set designer went to police to accuse Depardieu of sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual insults during filming after the actor published an open letter in Le Figaro newspaper in October 2023 stating: “Never, never have I abused a woman”, and suggesting he was the victim of a media “lynching”.
Six months earlier, the investigative website Mediapart had published allegations of sexual violence against him from more than a dozen women, with some claims going back to the early 2000s. About 20 women in total have accused him of abuse and improper behaviour but several cases have been dropped as they are out of time for prosecution.
Grinberg has supported the two women, saying Depardieu repeatedly made “salacious remarks” during the shoot in Paris.
The trial was originally scheduled for last October but was postponed due to Depardieu’s ill health. At the time, his lawyer, Jérémie Assous, said the actor had undergone a quadruple heart bypass and his diabetes had been aggravated by the stress of the forthcoming trial.
He has since been seen by a court-appointed doctor who declared him fit to appear, though the hearings will be limited to six hours a day and he will be given permission to take breaks when needed.
Depardieu was placed under formal investigation on accusations of rape and sexual assault in 2020 after the actor Charlotte Arnould accused him of having attacked her on two occasions at his home in Paris in 2018, when she was 22 and he was 70.
After Depardieu’s lawyers tried to get the case dropped, the Paris chief prosecutor said there was “serious and confirmed evidence” that justified maintaining the charges. The investigation continues.
Assous said the actor “denies all the accusations in their totality”.
The #MeToo movement, which emerged in 2017 after the arrest of the Hollywood director Harvey Weinstein, has been slow to gain traction in France.
At last year’s César awards, the equivalent of the Oscars, Judith Godrèche, 51, who has accused two high-profile directors of raping her as a teenager, spoke of the “omertà” surrounding the abuse of women and girls in the French film industry.
