In an interview with “Elle”, actress Anouk Grinberg denounces the silence of the cinema industry in the face of Gérard Depardieu’s attacks on women, which she claims to have witnessed on film sets.
“Everyone who worked with Depardieu knows that he attacks women,” says actress Anouk Grinberg, denouncing a “deafening silence” from the world of cinema in an interview with She to be published Thursday October 12. The 60-year-old actress, former companion of Bertrand Blier, close to Gérard Depardieu, intends to support the actress Charlotte Arnould, whom she knows well and who denounced two rapes at the star’s Parisian home at the end of August 2018. Depardieu was indicted in 2020 for “rape” and “sexual assault” in this investigation.
He is also questioned by the testimonies of 13 women accusing him of sexual violence, published in April by Mediapart. The Paris prosecutor’s office indicated at the time of these revelations that it had not “received no new complaints to date”.
“I saw him put his hands on his butt”
At the beginning of October, Depardieu responded by publishing an open letter denying the facts of which he is accused, denouncing a “lynching” orchestrated by the “media court” and ensuring to be “neither rapist nor predator”. “Never, ever, have I abused a woman,” he wrote.
“When he says (…) that he has never attacked a woman, I have seen him do it all this time”answers Anouk Grinberg in She, talking about the 1990s, when she was the partner of Bertrand Blier, and the filming with Depardieu of thank you lifereleased in 1991. “I saw him put his hands on women’s buttocks, touch their breasts, their genitals while joking. I heard him talk all day about their pussy, how he would like to suck them all day and no one never said anything”, she accuses.
“I had no choice but to laugh with the pack”
“I was not spared from his verbal attacks,” specifies Anouk Grinberg, who explains that “He and Blier incited each other to humiliate women and laugh about it. The team pledged allegiance, also laughed to please the kings. At that point in my life, I had no other choice but to laugh with the pack to (…) have a little place”, she justifies.
Anouk Grinberg calls for breaking the silence to help Charlotte Arnould, the actress who filed the complaint: “Charlotte is alone against everyone, that’s why we have to move forward as a group, that’s why I’m coming out of the woods.”