The French actor Gerard Depadieu has returned to Paris from tax exile to appear in a play, reports The Daily Telegraph.
He may have missed a string of court dates to answer charges that he had been driving while drunk. But at the weekend Gérard Depardieu, the actor who took Belgian residence, then Russian citizenship after a bitter dispute with the French government over tax, finally managed to turn up on time - for his first Paris stage appearance in a decade.
Depardieu, notorious as much for his off-screen antics as for his film credentials, will tread the boards of the Theatre Antoine for just seven nights before another actor takes over in the US play Love Letters, the two-hander he is playing opposite the 81-year-old Anouk Aimée.
He won a standing ovation at the end of his first performance on Saturday evening, but refused to give autographs afterwards as he mounted his scooter and drive off into the Paris night.
The actor was fined last year after falling off his scooter while driving drunk in Paris. He failed to turn up at the hearing at which he was fined €4,000 (£3,300) and had his licence suspended for six months. He also did not show up for an appeal hearing he requested in December. The case has been postponed until April.
Read more of this report from The Daily Telegraph.