French police have taken actor Gérard Depardieu into custody for questioning on new accusations of sexual assault, the French media reported on Monday.
A number of media sources, together with Agence France-Presse (AFP) and BFM-TV, are reporting that the 75-year-old actor (Cyrano de Bergerac, Inexperienced Card) has been accused by two separate ladies of sexual assault. The alleged incidents reported occurred in 2021 — when Depardieu was capturing French movie Les Violets vertes (The Inexperienced Shutters) — and in 2014 throughout the making of TV film Le Magicien et les Siamois (The Magician and the Siamese).
One other assault case towards Depardieu involving allegations of two acts of rape relationship again to 2018 introduced by actress Charlotte Arnould continues to be making its approach via the French courts. French prosecutors dismissed a special grievance, filed by French actress Hélène Darras, in January, citing the statute of limitations for the alleged crime, which Darras stated occurred on the set of Fabien Onteniente’s movie Disco in 2007.
Final April, in an in-depth report revealed by French investigative information web site Médiapart, 13 ladies accused Depardieu of sexually inappropriate habits. He’s additionally the goal of a grievance from Spain, the place journalist and author Ruth Baza has accused him of getting raped her in 1995.
The actor has denied all allegations towards him, going so far as to publish an open letter within the French newspaper Le Figaro final October denouncing what he termed a “lynching” carried out by a “court docket of the media.”
Regardless of the numerous allegations towards him, Depardieu nonetheless has his defenders. After a documentary expose on the French star, known as The Fall of the Ogre aired on French TV final December, sparking widespread outrage, French President Emmanuel Macron stated he was a “massive admirer” of the actor and that Depardieu “makes France proud.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Paris police for affirmation of Depardieu’s arrest and to the actor’s lawyer for remark.