Gérard Depardieu is the father of four children: Jean, 16, born of his love affair with Hélène Bizot, Roxane, 30, whose mother is none other than Karine Silla and Julie, 49, sister of Guillaume, all two fruits of the marriage of the hero of Cyrano de Bergerac with actress Elisabeth Guignot. But on October 13, 2008, Gérard Depardieu’s life took a dramatic turn. His eldest son, whose existence had been punctuated by drug addiction, serious health concerns and excessive violence, died suddenly at the age of 37, leaving behind a daughter, Louise, now aged 22. year.
While filming in Romania for the film The childhood of Icarus by Alex Iordachescu, in which he gave the reply to Alysson Paradis, Guillaume Depardieu contracts serious pneumonia combined with staphylococcus aureus. Repatriated to France, the 37-year-old actor is taken care of at Garches hospital. Unfortunately, the treatments administered and the presence of the doctors were not enough to save his life.
This loss, Gérard Depardieu, whose relations with Guillaume were often chaotic, never recovered. Last February, he confided as rarely in the JDD on the disappearance of his son: “I do not know mourning: my son Guillaume is in me, as are Jean Carmet, Maurice Pialat, François Truffaut or Barbara. If absence weighs us down, it is because of the void it leaves. I make sure to fill it in by saying that Guillaume would have liked such and such a thing.“
During his funeral, celebrated in Bougival, where the ashes of Guillaume Depardieu were buried, Gérard Depardieu spoke, reading an extract from Little Prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “You understand. It is too far. I can’t, take that body away. It’s too heavy. – I was silent. He said to me: you are there, he took my hand, but he still tormented himself.“A story evoking the complicated relationship that father and son had.
In 2003, during an interview granted to the Parisian, Guillaume Depardieu responded to an interview with his father in which he mentioned family problems and his complicated divorce with the mother of Julie and Guillaume. Words that provoked the black anger of his son: “He allows himself to talk about his family, my mother, my sister, my half-sister, and about me. Everything he said was lies. It’s an open secret. […] He says he’s been the one who’s been wanting a divorce for fourteen years, that’s not true. My mother has been trying for a divorce on good emotional terms for not fourteen years but for many years. He is an upstart, he was unable to mourn his parents. He was unable to raise his children.“Father and son will never have time to reconcile…