(Paris) French cinema giant Gérard Depardieu, already indicted for rape, has been targeted since mid-September by another complaint from an actress who accuses him of having sexually assaulted her during filming in 2007, indicated Wednesday the Paris prosecutor’s office.
The complainant, actress Hélène Darras, detailed her accusations in a program which will be broadcast Thursday on the public channel France 2, claiming to have suffered the attacks on the set of the film Disco.
During filming, Gérard Depardieu “passes his hand on my hips, on my buttocks” then “says to me bluntly: ‘Do you want to come up to my dressing room’”, she says. She tells him “no”, but “it doesn’t change anything”, she says. “Between takes, he will continue to grope me.”
The prosecution specified that it was in the process of analyzing the complaint, which a priori relates to prescribed facts, to determine its direction: the classification without further action or launch of investigations.
Contacted, Mr. Depardieu’s lawyer was not immediately available.
In addition to this complaint, Gérard Depardieu is already at the heart of another investigation in Paris.
The actor was indicted (equivalent to indicted in French law) on December 16, 2020 for rape and sexual assault after another complaint, filed by the actress Charlotte Arnould who had denounced at the end of August 2018 two rapes at the Parisian home of the star.
Charlotte Arnould obtained in the summer of 2020 that the investigation, first closed by the Paris prosecutor’s office in June 2019, be entrusted to an investigating judge. Since then, around ten other women have accused Gérard Depardieu of sexual violence in the press.
The actor, who was confronted this summer by Charlotte Arnould before the judge responsible for the investigations, was also questioned about these new testimonies, according to a source close to the case.
1er October, he denied the accusations, insisting in an open letter published in the daily Le Figaro be “neither a rapist nor a predator”. “Never, ever have I abused a woman,” he wrote, then announcing, through his agent, that he would no longer participate in “any project” in the “context” of these accusations.
A sacred monster of French cinema, Gérard Depardieu is an extraordinary actor whose career has been punctuated by excesses and scandals. He has more than 200 films in cinema and television to his credit.