French actor Gérard Depardieu accused of sexual violence by 13 women

“You“You're called Gérard Depardieu. You're under investigation for rape and sexual assault … You're disgusting, but the worst thing is that French women and men are still on your side.” On her Instagram account the director Andréa Bescond, who is very involved in the fight against sexual violence, has got into the habit of challenging the general public about #MeToo cases.

On November 17th 2022 she devoted one of her daily posts to the complaint made by actress Charlotte Arnould, which led to French actor Gérard Depardieu being placed under investigation for “rape”. As a result a number of personal stories appeared in the comment section, some of them very precise and with dates; as well as some accounts from friends or colleagues of alleged victims. “He's the only public personality about whom I've received so many stories, there were around half-a-dozen of them, lots of experiences from film sets,” said Andréa Bescond.

Two years earlier, the stories also flowed in when the collective 'Paye Ton Tournage' – which highlights sexual or sexist violence on film sets – published an appeal for witnesses concerning a “very well-known actor”, after it had received two alerts about Depardieu. “Each time the modus operandi was very recognisable,” recalled co-founder Alice Godart.

Mediapart carried out its own investigation. In addition to the complaint deposed by Charlotte Arnould, we collected 13 accounts from women who said they had suffered inappropriate sexual comments or gestures from the well-known actor, of varying degrees of seriousness, during the shooting of eleven films that came out between 2004 and 2022, or in public locations. But we also received accounts from many witnesses. Not all of them feature in this article.

Three of these women have told their stories to the French justice system, though none has made a formal complaint. Some gave up on doing so, other did not even consider it. The reason was the feeling that their word would carry little weight against this “giant of French cinema”. And that doing so could even mean the end of their careers.

Throughout the stories, the same scenarios seem to keep cropping up. The women involved are actresses, make-up artists or technical staff. They say they had to suffer hands groping in their pants, between their legs, on their bum or on their chest; they have endured obscene sexual remarks; and sometimes they have had to put up with persistent groaning noises. Such actions were often followed by laughter on the set. And the same phrase kept recurring when some of them complained: “Oh it's okay, it's Gérard!”

On top of the sexual and sexist violence that they describe, these accounts also raise questions over the indulgence shown towards the 74-year-old actor on film sets, and the lack of reaction to his behaviour from production teams. When approached by Mediapart Gérard Depardieu declined to meet us, and did not respond to our written questions.

The firm of lawyers representing him, Temime, said he “formally denies all the allegations that may come under the jurisdiction of the criminal law” (read his full response, here, in French). During questioning as part of the ongoing investigation into the rape claims against him, the actor has denied that he is a “predator”. He described himself as a gentlemen who “likes to woo”, someone who is “opposed to all form of violence whether it be verbal, physical or psychological” and who is “extremely reserved” about sexual matters.

An actress filed her statement with the French justice system in March

It is New York in December 2014. In The Box cabaret in Manhattan Gérard Depardieu is filming Big House (2015), a small-budget film by director Jean-Emmanuel Godart, 26, in which he plays a brothel boss. During a scene sitting at a table with three foreign extras, who were in short skirts and suspender belts and playing his star turns, the French actor is said to have been “very tactile”.

“Between takes he whispered things in their ears in French, he tried to kiss them on the neck and touch their thighs under the table. One of them laughed nervously as she asked him to stop,” reported wardrobe assistant Isabel Butel, who said that she detected an “awkwardness that everyone saw”. An actress present at the time recalls that “when the director shouted 'Cut!' one of the extras was as rigid as a plank of wood, she seemed to be in difficulty” and a “long break” had to be taken.

The extra in question was 'Lyla' – not her real name – who was 24 at the time. “Without warning Gérard Depardieu put his hand under my dress, I felt his fingers trying to slip in to get to my knickers,” she told Mediapart. Feeling ill at ease, she said she “pushed away his hand”. She said: “But he continued, he became aggressive, he tried to push my knickers to one side to finger me: I realised that he wasn't acting in role. If I hadn't stopped him he'd have succeeded.”

She immediately went and complained to the production team. This account is backed up by the wardrobe assistant who says she heard the conversation and confirms the wording of Lyla's story. Isabel Butel recalls having been “very shocked” by the reaction on the set itself. “It was kind of 'Oh that's Gérard, he's a bit mischievous!'” she said.

When contacted the director Jean-Emmanuel Godart and producer David Zerat did not respond. Meanwhile a member of the production team confirmed to Mediapart that she had been informed that “the shoot was interrupted because an extra said she had been a victim of Gérard Depardieu”. The production team member said: “I'd never agree if someone said this might have been untrue. She was in a state of distress, very shocked, and she also said that people had laughed. The scene was modified so that she was no longer next to Depardieu.”

According to the wardrobe assistant who overheard the conversation, the director later spoke with the actor to tell him “how happy he was and grateful that he was there, but that he had to behave himself, that he was making the extras feel ill at ease”. The French actor then “muttered something about 'these Americans, they're a bit prudish' while laughing a bit,” said the wardrobe assistant.

After the break Lyla says that Gérard Depardieu had a go at her. This was confirmed by an actress who interjected and said they should get back to work. “[Lyla] didn't seem happy,” said the actress. “Depardieu was shouting that he could have who he wanted and that he didn't want her, that she was a 'fat pig'. The team had trouble handling Depardieu, whose presence raised the film's profile.”

Lyla says that though she was “in tears”, she received very little support. Several people even suggested that if she made a complaint no one would “testify” for her. “They kept repeating to me: 'Do you know who he is? If you go up against him in court, you will never win and you will be seen as a fame whore.' I was told to suck it up, smile, pretend nothing happened and come back to work.

“As I just got my work visa approved and had to pay my immigration lawyer fees, I was more afraid of getting blacklisted for leaving. I decided to stay. Depardieu forgot who I was the next day.”

Eight years later the actress still remembers this shoot and how it “traumatised” her. “I was assaulted in a work environment. I was not in a secluded area when this happened. I was working on set,” she said. “There was so many eyewitnesses and, best of all, the director. No one said anything. Even when I complained and when I yelled out. A deathly silence.”

Several years after the shoot, Lyla consulted a lawyer but did not take it any further, thinking that the events were too far in the past for any legal action. In March, after Mediapart's interview with her, she decided to send her account to the French justice system “to help Charlotte Arnould”. She said: “I want to do my bit as a woman in the same industry and to refuse to be part of the problem by allowing such behaviour and staying silent.”

Depardieu reprimanded by director Fabien Onteniente

Six years earlier there had been another film set, with different extras; but similar claims were reported to the production team. In 2007 the director Fabien Onteniente was filming a night club scene for his comedy Disco (2008). Around 250 extras were on the set to dance around the club boss, played by Gérard Depardieu. One of the extras, Helène Darras, then a student at drama school, describes how “between each take” the actor “grabbed [me] by the waist” and had a “wandering hand”. She says he then “ended up putting his hand on my bum in an insistent way” and suggested they “went to his dressing room”.

“I didn't dare say anything and I waited for it to pass. At the age of 26 I couldn't make an enemy of casting directors …. and I'd also grown up with the idea that an actor keeps quiet, that they're a muse, there to please. But I've never wanted to watch the film.” Last year she told her story to the police to support Charlotte Arnould's account. “I told myself I couldn't leave her on her own. The film world is full of Gérards and we have to speak up.”

The former actor Lise Schreiber remembers when Depardieu asked a group of extras she was with “if we were sucking our guys and if we enjoyed that”. She says: “The girls were very ill at ease and barely responded. But I looked at him askance. It was in front of everyone, no one said anything. Suddenly he got up and said: 'Right, let's film while I'm wet, before I dry up?'” 

But it was another incident that got reported, according to six accounts gathered by Mediapart. And this was Gérard Depardieu's behaviour towards a young female extra a few seconds before the start of a scene. Contacted by Mediapart, the actress did not want her name and details of the story to feature in our article. Some of the other extras comforted her at the time and the casting team was alerted. Contacted by Mediapart, the woman in charge of casting extras said that she had seen the young actress in her office and had then warned the production director and director who seemed “blasé, not surprised”.

Her two assistants at the time have not forgotten the episode. “This incident left its mark on me, I've spoken about it to quite a few people since,” said one of them, Hélène Raoul. “There was an uproar, the extra no longer wanted to carry on filming,” recalled the other, Adèle – who says she herself had Depardieu's “hand on my bum” during a shoot in 2005 on which she was an assistant producer.

Gérard Depardieu's behaviour was referred to the production team in another Fabien Onteniente film, the comedy Turf (2013). During a scene at the racecourse at Auteuil in west Paris the actor behaved inappropriately towards one of two extras with him, according to four first-hand accounts collected by Mediapart. “At the moment the director said 'action' he grabbed one extra, who was in a skirt, on the bum. She was very unhappy,” said a member of the production team, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of “professional reprisals”.

“The actress told me: 'It's awful, he doesn't stop touching my bum',” confirmed the casting director, who alerted the director and who herself took a radical measure. “As I wasn't sure that Gérard would stop, during the scene I got down on all fours to keep an eye, measuring the distance needed so that he couldn't touch the extra with his arms,” she said.

Contacted by Mediapart, director Fabien Onteniente confirmed that he had been warned by the casting director that Gérard Depardieu was “getting heavy with the girls” on the set of Disco. “I concluded from this that he must have had a wandering hand, given how he behaved while waiting for takes, being clingy and laughing loudly.”

Then on the film Turf “two extras” had come to see him. “One was in tears and complaining about hands on her bum. Looking at the face of this girl who had come to be an extra and was full of hope, I felt moved, and it made me mad. So I went to tell Depardieu off, I cranked it up with him, I told him: 'Don't start that again, it's over! Behave yourself', and it abruptly stopped. He was very sheepish, like a child who'd done something stupid.” Meanwhile the producers of the two films said they had no recollection of these events (read their full response in French here).

Reports of the same 'modus operandi'

In another example, a former trainee on the set of the film 36 Quai des Orfèvres – who has provided a statement in the current legal proceedings against the actor – told Mediapart she had “seen Gérard Depardieu put his hand down the pants of extras” who were “wearing dresses with low backs” and that this had taken place “without a reaction from anyone”.

The accounts received by Mediapart describe a similar “modus operandi”, to use the expression employed by several women. First of all the actor establishes a sexually-charged, uncomfortable atmosphere by constantly making crude sexual comments, by posing sexual or intimate questions to women, and by making “rutting boar noises” and “groans” and “snuffles”, according to numerous accounts. Then with some women he would go further: he would touch their thighs or bum, or put his hand between their legs or on their pants. This would usually happen in everyone's view and with everyone's knowledge.

Throughout the stories the same words keep cropping up. “When he arrived on the set he was saying 'It smells of pussy here!'” said the extra Graziella Jullian. A casting director also noticed his comments on two film sets. “Between takes he was shouting 'Pussy, pussy, pussy!' , 'Your pussy is getting wet',” she recalled.

Élisa, the daughter of someone Depardieu knows, and who spent time with him during childhood, recalled how he made her feel “very ill at ease”. The young woman said: “He just spoke about sex, about what he'd like to do to such or such a woman. When he saw a woman he often groaned like an animal, staring at her, and would say 'look at that there', 'fat pig', 'slut'. He made sexist 'jokes' non-stop. He was happy about the unease that he caused.”

Mediapart also heard from 'Jeanne' – not her real name – a former actress who, at the age of 39, spent a week with Depardieu during the filming of La Môme (2007). In 2018 she gave evidence in an industrial tribunal case – still ongoing – about another shoot, according to her statement (see below in black box).

She told Mediapart: “It started initially with some nice mocking stuff, then he made some leering faces using his tongue, obscene gestures, and made comments along the lines of 'your pussy', 'you're getting wet', 'I'm going to lick your pussy', 'take out your Tampax'. And then suddenly he'd come up behind me and fondle me without asking what I thought...”

In her legal statement she cited several detailed examples. These included the day when, during a crowd scene, she says he tried to “put his hand on my genitals” and she “brusquely” pushed him off. On another occasion, accompanied by a man he introduced as the producer, the actor grabbed her from behind and “rubbed my hips, stomach and breasts”. She said that Depardieu laughed as he asked: “How does it feel to be groped in front of a producer?” That producer, Alain Goldman, himself insisted that “during this shoot” he had “never noticed inappropriate behaviour on his part or heard a member of the team complain of his behaviour”. A technician confirmed that he had been present during “inappropriate gestures from Mr Depardieu towards this actress”.

Jeanne said she had the feeling she was his “toy of the moment”. She said: “If you don't play along it's because you're hung-up. But underneath the game he was causing harm. It was violent, humiliating, wounding. For a week I held on like an animal defending itself. I was exhausted. When I got back to my hotel room each evening I would cry.”

At the time Jeanne said she had “handled it as best she could” and developed “all the strategies possible to deflect and channel his attention”. While in the end she had once “hit him on the arm to say stop”, she said she did not seek any further “confrontation” with him because, she says, she would have lost. “I was no match for him. And at the time I needed to work, to eat, so I tried my damnedest,” said Jeanne.

Her husband, a senior police officer, still remembers what she told him at the time, and the “emotion that overcame her” each time she brought the subject up. “To this day these assaults remain an unhealed wound,” he said. Jeanne says now that she was “lucky” to have encountered the actor when she was 40. “At 20 I'd have been destroyed,” she said.

The actress Sarah Brooks was 20 when she met the famous actor, It was the autumn of 2015 and she was filming an episode of Marseille, the first French series on Netflix. It was the first time that she had been on a film set. Already ill at ease in the minimal costume of her character Lolita, she described how during a photo shoot for the actors in front of the public and the production team, Gérard Depardieu put his hand down her shorts while making a “strange, loud groaning” noise.

She says that the first time this happened she “took away his hand” but that he had put it back “in my pants”, trying to “touch my bum”. She says: “I took his hand away a second time and I said loudly: 'Gegé [editor's note, a diminutive form of Gérard] is putting his hand in my shorts'. He replied: 'Huh, I thought you wanted to succeed in cinema.' Everyone laughed, and so he then carried on. I felt awful, it was so humiliating.” A male actor present told Mediapart that Sarah Brooks had “said that Depardieu had put a hand on her bum” and that she had seemed “surprised” and “lost”. But he also played it down. “Even with me, he put his hands on my bum. That's Depardieu,” said the actor.

Given the general hilarity that greeted the episode, Sarah Brooks said she had “not even tried to alert the production” team. Both the producer, Pascal Breton, and the director, Thomas Gilou, said that they had neither been present during any inappropriate behaviour on the part of the actor nor had they had anything reported to them.

This feeling of humiliation is a predominant one in the accounts gathered by Mediapart. 'Florence' - not her real name – has never forgotten the filming of Hello Goodbye (2008). At 24 she, too, was young, making her debut, and had been a “fan” of Depardieu. She became disillusioned from day one. When the director introduced her to the best-known French film actor, the latter looked at her bustier dress and said: “Ah, those little breasts!” He then put his “hand between my legs”, she said. “That caused laughter all around. But I was speechless, I thought I had reacted completely stupidly. I felt so small.”

During their joint scene around a table she says that he “simulated a sexual act and other stupid things that weren't in the script and made just about everyone laugh”. Then he asked for his script – which he had not learnt – to be stuck to her face. “I refused, I said that I could hold it in front of me. He replied that in any case he didn't like my face. It was tough, I really wanted to cry,” she said.

Florence said that when the time came to film close-ups of her, Depardieu had returned to the set wearing socks, and that rather than saying his lines, he repeated: “I'm going to lick your little pussy,” “Do you like to take it up the arse?” and that he then “put his foot between my legs” and tried to “get to my pants” under her voluminous dress. “I tried to keep it together. But I felt sullied, totally humiliated,” she said.

On the same shoot, another actress, 'Émilie' – not her real name – who was 22 at the time, says that the famous actor “spent his time constantly looking at me, looking at my thighs, and making animal groans” and that he had said to her “something like 'I'd give you a good licking' while making lewd gestures with his tongue”. Feeling “very distressed” by Depardieu and wanting to remain “very cold and distant”, she says that she did not respond. But she insists that this “inappropriate and smutty” behaviour was “not hidden at all” during filming. In 2018 the two actresses happened by chance to meet at a birthday party and confided in each other. “It was a relief for us to be able to speak about it,” Émilie recalled.

When contacted the director, Graham Guit, explained that he had “not been present at such scenes” and that “nothing was reported to me during filming”.

Asymmetry of power

Another factor that keeps recurring in the women's accounts is the asymmetry between often young women who are in a vulnerable situation at the start of their careers, and on the other hand a globally-recognised actor whose mere presence can sometimes lead to a film getting funding. Several of the women interviewed have underlined how in a normal company such behaviour would have led to an internal investigation. “There's no profession where people are allowed to act like that ...” says the trainee who worked on the film 36 quai des Orfèvres, and whose view is that it was Depardieu's fame that allowed him to “act in the most inappropriate manner”.

“He has a name, he knows that he's going to impress the bit players who have no power,” said make-up artist Gwenaëlle Courtois, who recalls the actor's “wandering hand” on her “hip” when she was doing his make-up in the dressing room for the television programme 'Les Enfants de la TV' in studios at La Plaine Saint-Denis north of Paris in around 2000. “I was 33 years old and and employed casually, I didn't dare say anything. I felt very uncomfortable, I was embarrassed, he upset me'” she said.

“You feel vulnerable. The fact that he's the boss, you don't dare say anything,” says 'Léa' – not her real name – who was not in the the cinema industry but worked between 2004 and 2016 in restaurants owned by Gérard Depardieu. “I was 22 when he took me under his wing, he was like a dad to me, I idolised him,” she recalls. Over the following years his behaviour ended up having an impact on her. She says that “two or three times” when he “dropped by at the end of the day” he had “groped her from behind”. One busy Saturday when she was looking after the till she says the actor offered her a 50-euro note “for my pussy”. Another day, in her apartment that went with the job, she says he sat on the bed and said to her: “I'd give you a good fucking here but I'm too old.” Léa says she felt “dirty”. Messages she sent and a witness confirm that this is what she told people close to her at the time. But because she took the actor's company to an industrial tribunal to fight redundancy she “didn't dare say anything”. She explained: “I was afraid that they'd say I was trying to get revenge.”

One common theme among the women whose accounts Mediapart has collected is that their status meant they were unable to protest. They were afraid of being “fired” or “blacklisted” in the industry. They were afraid that a “film shoot costing several millions would be stopped” because of them. They were also afraid of having to fight alone against everyone. For most of the women say that they did not receive support on the film sets, and they had the feeling that “everyone seemed to support what went on”. Several of those who did raise the alarm also say that “nothing happened” as a result.

Absence of reaction on the film sets

All of them told Mediapart that, even more than Gérard Depardieu's behaviour, it was the attitude of the film crew that most shocked them. The absence of reaction, looking the other way, or in some cases bursts of laughter; the events that they were complaining of were played down. They had the feeling that they were not being “protected”.

“Adults let an actor fondle my breasts in front of everyone,” said the actor and scriptwriter Alysse Hallali. In 2009, at the age of 17, she played Depardieu's daughter in L'autre Dumas (2010). She was a huge fan of the actor and in particular of his performance as Cyrano de Bergerac, a role which she knew by heart, and her ambition was to recite to him off set the famous 'nose tirade' scene from that production. But according to her, their encounter was very different from what she had imagined. When he saw her approaching in period costume Depardieu said to her: “Ah, it's you my girl? Well, my girl's grown up well, look she has little nipples!” She says the actor then grabbed her “firmly” and “put his hand on my breast” and “caressed” it.

She says she tried to “gently remove him several times” but he “resisted”. Then she “searched for looks of support on the set”. But in vain. “I weighed 45 kilos [about 100 lbs], in other words a pipsqueak unable to resist this oppressive embrace. It lasted right through the scene, I couldn't concentrate.” In the end she never recited Cyrano's lines to Depardieu as she had planned. When contacted the director of L'autre Dumas, Safy Nebbiu, said he had not “witnessed anything in particular” and that “no one had reported problems to me”.

Camille G., a former assistant location manager, is also particularly critical of the reaction of the film crew. “What I found really tough was the wall of silence around all that. You felt very alone,” she says. In 2020 at the age of 25 she spent time with Gérard Depardieu on the film Maison de retraite (2022), directed by Thomas Gilou and produced by Kev Adams. She says that she was “trapped” by the famous actor in a corridor, who spoke to her about her “magnificent smile” and of the “small, long or large penises which must have been” in her “mouth”, of the “sensuality” of her “small, firm and soft breasts” and of “his desire to rub my small moist pussy”. Camille says that she “firmly” protested but that despite her saying no he had “insisted throughout the day on groaning and snuffling” each time she passed. She says that she asked “to be relieved” from her duties but to no avail.

A journalist who was covering the shoot for the television programme '50' Inside' on TFI was present at one such scene. She recalls that the actor let out an “enormous animal grunt two centimetres from [Camille's] face while looking her in the eyes”. The journalist said that the assistant location manager “went completely red and lowered her gaze”, then told her that she “couldn't take any more”. The journalist says that she was “shocked” by the reaction of the production team. “All I heard all day was 'It's Gérard...'”When contacted, Kev Adams did not respond. The director Thomas Gilou said that he had “not personally noticed that”.

Florence, the actress from Hello Goodbye, says that had she made a legal complaint it would have been against the production team because she “felt in danger”. The actress said she had tried to get help on the film set. “I really had the impression that what was happening was a non-problem, that as it was Gérard Depardieu it was quite normal,” she said. Her agent, whom she spoke to about it, told her that she had to “toughen up”. Her mother, whom she confided in when the film came out, played it down. “Listen, that must be Depardieu's sense of humour,” she told her daughter.

Years later, when actress Adèle Haenel spoke out about the issue of sexual harassment, Florence's mother apologised to her daughter. “[Florence] explained to me that while she was delivering a line to him he forced his foot between her thighs,” said her mother. “I feel ashamed for having calmed her down and excusing Depardieu. At the time we rather closed our eyes to the subject even though it's an abuse of power. My daughter was terrified because it was Depardieu.”

Graziella Jullian, an extra in season two of Marseille (2018), was also “shocked” by the lack of reaction. “Everyone saw what was going on! People were bursting out laughing, it could have continued...” she said. The 47-year-old advertising model described how between takes Depardieu would “ask me questions about my sex life, saying to me 'aren't you bored with having it off with the same pair of balls all your life'.” He then “played with my hair, my tights” and had “stroked my thigh”, she says. “I said to him 'What are you doing Mr Depardieu?' He replied 'Oh, you're getting angry, but I'm not doing anything at all!'”

Jeanne, who was in La Môme, has a similar memory. “Everyone saw me struggling, no one moved,” she said. It was only on her penultimate day on the set that the director, Olivier Dahan, came to see her. “He asked me if I was all right, and told me that if I thought that he was going too far, he would intervene. But Depardieu had been overstepping the mark for a long time!” she said.

As far as Jeanne is concerned the production team is in some respects “ten times more responsible than Depardieu”. She said: “What's awful is not him but those who let him act.” Like others, she saw that the actors and crew were afraid to raise the alarm or protest. “Yet if they all got up and stopped work and said 'we can't accept that' they would have extraordinary power...” said Jeanne.

When approached by Mediapart, Olivier Dahan said he “no recollection at all of that” while at the same time he “did not question this account”.

A 'fear' of reporting this kind of behaviour

Several people who witnessed the actor's behaviour admit they were shocked but said they did not know what to do. “I said to myself 'but isn't someone going to say anything?' And at the same time, I didn't go and see the producers either. We were very conditioned, we hadn't yet had #MeToo and then again, we were stunned...” said Lise Schreiber, an extra in the film Disco. Isabel Butel, the wardrobe mistress from the film Big House, recalls having “felt guilty” after asking herself “what could I have said and done at my level”. She added: “This man held us hostage in those scenes.”

The actor's fame and power have been at the core of Mediapart's investigation. During our interviews, several people said they had the feeling that he was “untouchable”. That made some hesitate a long time before speaking to us. Sarah Brooks spoke of her fear of “not being listened to and of no longer being able to work”. She explained: “Because I am a nobody faced with the giant of French cinema.”

Florence, who, at the end of 2019 drafted an email to Mediapart before deciding not to send it, explained that “to get away with saying things in France you have to be above the person you're accusing.” She adds: “I'm a working actress but with an up and down career. French cinema is a small world. Speaking out means making it tough for yourself.”

It was also what dissuaded others from talking at all or to eventually decline to speak having first agreed to do so. For example, one female actor feared a defamation suit from Depardieu. There was also a male actor who gave us his account of Gérard Depardieu's behaviour on a film set and who then at the last minute changed his mind, because he did not want to “condemn” the actor. “It's a media bomb, I don't want to be part of it,” he said.

“People are afraid,” said one casting director. When she told her colleagues and family and friends that she was going to respond to our questions their reaction was unanimous. “Are you crazy?” they asked her. “Cinema is a world with a cult of secrecy and therefore silence, it doesn't come naturally to report this kind of behaviour, one always has to keep quiet, there's a lot of self-censorship,” she said.

It is in any case hard for people not to be aware that Gérard Depardieu's behaviour has raised questions. Some accusations have already been published, as shown by various videos, articles and books (see Mediapart's article here).

Several women say that there were sometimes informal warnings about Gérard Depardieu's behaviour. For example, Alysse Hallali tells how when she arrived on a film set and asked a dresser “how Depardieu was”, the woman replied that “he was nice but he had wandering hands and made sexual comments”. And that when she told her own story to “people from within the profession” they replied: “Ah yes, but Depardieu...” She said: “Everyone knows, no one cares, everyone tolerates it.”

Graziella Jullian also says that she “always knew that things could happen” because she had heard “feedback from several film shoots” concerning the actor. “They said that he got out of control with women,” she said. Meanwhile Jeanne said that during one read-through, the production team had warned that the actor “touched women”. Four other women reported the same warnings to us.

During this investigation nine of the 20 directors and producers who were approached did not reply. The eleven others – with the exception of Fabien Onteniente – state that they had not seen or heard about anything (read their responses in full, in French, here). Several simply mentioned some “crude” or “smutty” comments from the actor. One such was Emmanuel Jacquelin, the director of season one of the series Marseille, who said he had not had anything reported to him and nor had he noticed anything on the set other than some “vulgar and inappropriate comments” from the actor. However, he told Mediapart that “an actress lodged a complaint” well after filming had ended. “She went to an industrial tribunal,” said the programme's producer Pascal Breton. “Her case was dismissed on every count and she is appealing.”

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• The original French version of this article can be read here.

English version by Michael Streeter

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