Volkswacht Bodensee - French actor Depardieu held for questioning over alleged sexual assault: source

The 75-year-old actor, who has made more than 200 films and television series, was charged with rape in 2020 and was forced to put his career on hold last autumn as allegations of sexual harassment and assault mounted against him.

Police were to question Depardieu over two women alleging that he assaulted them -- one on a film set in 2021 and the other on a shoot in 2014, a police source said, confirming a report by the BFMTV television channel.

The actor's lawyers, Christian Saint-Palais and Beatrice Geissmann Achille, did not immediately reply to a request from AFP for comment.

The first woman accuses him of having assaulted her when she was a member of the crew on the 2022 feature film "The Green Shutters".

The set designer, who filed a formal complaint in February, told investigative website Mediapart that Depardieu grabbed her as she left the set in a private hotel in Paris.

she alleged he groped her "waist and stomach, moving up to (her) breasts" and made obscene comments before his bodyguards removed him.

The woman's lawyer, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, declined to provide AFP with further details.

The second woman has alleged Depardieu groped her "all over" and made "inappropriate" remarks while she was an assistant on the set of 2015 film "Le magician et le Siamois" ("The Magician and the Siamese"), she told regional newspaper Le Courrier de l'Ouest.

- Rape charge -

Depardieu already faces a rape charge, as well as claims of assault from more than a dozen women -- all of which he has strongly denied.

"Never ever have I abused a woman," Depardieu wrote in Le Figaro newspaper in October.

Police in 2020 charged Depardieu with rape and sexual assault after actor Charlotte Arnould alleged he raped her in 2018 when she was 22 and anorexic.

Another sexual assault complaint filed last year by actor Helene Darras, who said Depardieu groped and propositioned her during a 2007 film shoot, has been dropped for being past the statute of limitations.

Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza said in December she had filed a criminal complaint in Spain against Depardieu, alleging he raped her in 1995 in Paris.

Despite the events having passed the statute of limitations, she said she decided to file her complaint in the hope that it would "help other people" to do the same.

Actor Anouk Grinberg, a co-star to Depardieu on "The Green Shutters", has described how she and others on set were "treated to his salacious nonsense from morning to night".

"When film producers hire Depardieu on a film, they know they are hiring an aggressor," she told AFP.

Grinberg said producers of "The Green Shutters" had supposedly appointed someone to deal with harassment issues but that she did nothing.

French cinema has in recent months been rocked by allegations that it has shrugged off sexism and sexual abuse for decades, and criticism that the arts have too long provided cover for abuse.

R.Braegger--VB