PARIS, April 29 — French police today summoned cinema legend Gerard Depardieu for questioning over suspected incidents of sexual assault with a view towards placing him in custody, a police source said.
Police were to question the 75-year-old actor over allegations by two women that he assaulted them — one on a film set in 2021 and the other on another shoot in 2014, the source said, confirming a report by the BFMTV television channel.
The first woman accuses him of having assaulted her when she was a member of the crew on 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 in a private hotel in Paris, groping her and making obscene comments, before his bodyguards removed him.
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The second woman has alleged he groped her “all over” and made “inappropriate” remarks while she was an assistant on the set of 2015 film Le magician et le Siamois (The Magician and the Siamese), she told regional newspaper Le Courrier de l’Ouest.
Depardieu already faces a rape charge, as well as claims of assault by more than a dozen women — all of which he has strongly denied.
“Never ever have I abused a woman,” Depardieu wrote in Le Figaro newspaper in October.
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Police in 2020 charged Depardieu with rape and sexual assault after actor Charlotte Arnould alleged he raped her in 2018 when she was 22 and anorexic.
Another sexual assault complaint filed last year by actor Helene Darras, who said Depardieu groped and propositioned her during a 2007 film shoot, has been dropped for being past the statute of limitations.
Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza said in December she had filed a criminal complaint in Spain against Depardieu, claiming he raped her in 1995 in Paris.
Despite the events having passed the statute of limitations, she said she decided to file her complaint hoping it would “help other people” to do the same. — AFP
