French Actor Gerard Depardieu, Aged 72, Charged With Rape

French Actor Gerard Depardieu, Aged 72, Charged With Rape by a young actress

Gerard Depardieu, the 72-year-old French acting legend, has reportedly been charged with rape and sexual assault, allegedly committed in his Paris home against an actress in her 20s in 2018.

AFP reported a judicial source today (Tuesday 23) had told them that the rape charge had originally been brought on August 27, 2018, when the young woman filed a complaint of rape and sexual aggression by the actor, in a court near the southern city of Aix-en-Provence.

The complaint was then investigated by officers in Paris, but the case was dropped in 2019 due to a lack of sufficient evidence to proceed with any charges, but then the actress but the relaunched proceedings in December 2020.

When the initial charges were brought in 2018, Herve Temime, Depardieu’s lawyer, said his client, “absolutely denies any rape, any sexual assault, any crime”, dismissing the complaint as “groundless”.

However, there is a law in France that apparently always leads to a case being reopened and examined by a magistrate if, as in the case of the young actress, she claims to be an ‘injured party’.

Gerard Depardieu is known to be a ‘larger-than-life’ and very controversial character, and has starred in more than 180 films, including top film roles in his native France, establishing himself as arguably France’s greatest ever screen actor, in films such as Camille Claudel, Jean de Florette, and Cyrano de Bergerac.

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