Paris:
French police on Monday detained film legend Gerard Depardieu for questioning after two women accused him of sexual assault, a source close to the case said.
The 75-year-old actor, who has made more than 200 films and television series, was accused of rape in 2020 and had to put his career on hold last fall as allegations of sexual harassment and assault mounted against him.
Police would question Depardieu about two women who claimed he attacked them – one on a film set in 2021 and the other during a shoot in 2014, a police source said, confirming a report by television channel BFMTV.
The actor's lawyers, Christian Saint-Palais and Beatrice Geissmann Achille, did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
The first woman accuses him of assaulting her when she was part of the crew of the 2022 feature film 'The Green Shutters'.
The set designer, who filed a formal complaint in February, told investigative website Mediapart that Depardieu grabbed her as she left the set at a private hotel in Paris.
She alleged he groped her “waist and stomach, up to (her) breasts” and made lewd comments before his bodyguards removed him.
The woman's lawyer, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, declined to provide AFP with further details.
The second woman claims Depardieu groped her 'everywhere' and made 'inappropriate' comments while she was an assistant on the set of the 2015 film 'Le magician et le Siamois' ('The Magician and the Siamese'), she said to the regional newspaper. Le Courrier de l'Ouest.
– Rape charges –
Depardieu already faces a rape charge and allegations of assault from more than a dozen women – all of which he has vehemently denied.
“I have never abused a woman,” Depardieu wrote in the newspaper Le Figaro in October.
Police charged Depardieu with rape and sexual assault in 2020 after actor Charlotte Arnould claimed he raped her in 2018 when she was 22 and anorexic.
Another sexual abuse complaint filed last year by actor Helene Darras, who said Depardieu groped her and propositioned her during a 2007 film shoot, has been dropped because the statute of limitations had expired.
Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza said in December that she had filed a complaint in Spain against Depardieu, alleging that he raped her in Paris in 1995.
Even though the events had exceeded the statute of limitations, she said she decided to file her complaint in the hope that it would “help other people” do the same.
Actor Anouk Grinberg, a co-star of Depardieu in “The Green Shutters”, has described how she and others on set were “treated to his prurient nonsense from morning to night”.
“When film producers hire Depardieu for a film, they know they are hiring an aggressor,” she told AFP.
Grinberg said producers of “The Green Shutters” supposedly appointed someone to deal with harassment issues, but she did nothing.
French cinema has been rocked in recent months by accusations that it has been shaking off sexism and sexual abuse for decades, and by criticism that the arts have provided a cover for abuse for too long.
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