French film star Gérard Depardieu was convicted by a Paris court on Tuesday for sexual assault on two women in the film he starred in 2021.
The judgment meets the requirement of the prosecutor after a four-day trial in March. The actors were also ordered to be on the list of sex offenders.
Women – a decorator and assistant director – work in the 2021 French film “Les Volets Verts” starring Mr. Depardieu.
The decorator, 54, only agreed to publicly identify her name by her name Amélie said Mr. De Pardieu grabbed her waist and pulled her towards him as he sat down. She said, then he locked her legs between them and reached his hands to her hips, genitals and breasts while muttering to himself.
The 34-year-old assistant director said the actor touched her breasts and hips three times when she took him from the locker room to Paris. She has not agreed to public identification.
Mr. Depardieu, 76, denied sexual assault in both cases, despite the change in his story about the decorators.
At first, he said he had grabbed her waist to “prevent slipping” but later said it was “to attract her attention” so he could tell her that doing what he thought was a bad thing. He said he never reached his hand on her body.
As for the second assistant, Mr. DePardieu said her story was impossible because without a bodyguard, he never traveled alone or could not walk helplessly.
He said he was not “the “vulgar, rude, trash” who was portrayed in the media. “I respect people. I love helping people,” he told the court in March.
But he also says that he comes from another generation, and his gorgeous, exaggerated and unapologetic personality is not suitable for the current era.
From the beginning, it was obvious that the trial was a two-sex assault by one of France’s most famous film stars. Instead, what happened in court was part of the country’s obsession with temptation, its non-critical cult of artists, and the stalling of the #MeToo movement in France.
Mr. DePardieu is considered one of the greatest actors of his generation, starring more than 230 films, including “Green Card” and “Cyrano de Bergerac”.
He has been the center of the French debate since arriving in 2017, with allegations of sexual abuse piled up on him. He strongly denied the allegations and was publicly defended by the famous French people, including leading actors and even the president.
More than 20 women accused him of sexual abuse, mainly through conversations with French news media, especially the investigation website Mediapart. Six of the women filed complaints to police, two of whom were revoked for exceeding the statute of limitations.
This is the first case to be tried on Mr. DePardieu.
