The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday that French actor Gerard Depardieu was charged in December with rape and sexual assault after authorities revived a 2018 investigation that was initially dropped.
It is the latest in a string of such allegations against prominent figures in France.
The office told The Associated Press that Depardieu was not detained when he was handed the preliminary charges on Dec. 16.
The prosecutor’s office addressed the charges after the case was leaked to French media.
French media reports said the charges relate to allegations made by an actress in her 20s that date back to 2018. An initial inquiry against the star was dropped in 2019 because of lack of evidence, but was later revived.
But it was reopened last summer, leading to criminal charges being filed in December, the judicial source said.
French newspaper Le Parisien and broadcaster BFM TV said the woman alleged that Depardieu assaulted her on Aug. 7 and Aug. 13, 2018, at his home in Paris. The two met when Depardieu led a master class at her school, BFM TV reported.
The actress, who has not been named, first filed a complaint with details of alleged rape and assault in August 2018 in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence. The probe was taken over by Paris investigators, but was soon dropped.
Depardieu’s lawyer, Hervé Temime, was not immediately available for comment, but he has previously said that the actor “absolutely denies any rape, any sexual assault, any crime.”
Some reports have suggested that Depardieu and the actress were rehearsing a scene of a theatre play, but the source said “there was nothing professional about the encounter”.
The woman’s lawyer, Elodie Tuaillon-Hibon, told AFP that she hoped her client’s “private sphere will be respected” as the case unfolds.
He won acclaim in French-language films such as “The Last Metro” and “Jean de Florette,” but went on to perform in a range of English-language movies, including the romantic comedy “Green Card” and a film version of “Hamlet”.
He is famous for untiringly shooting film after film clocking up more than 200 cinema or TV films over more than 50 years.
But over the course of his career he has often been embroiled in scandals that have hit the headlines, and thrown public tantrums.
He knocked a paparazzi unconscious in 2005, urinated in the cabin of a Paris-Dublin flight in 2011 and attacked a motorist in central Paris in 2012. The following year he was fined for drink-driving.
“The man is dark but the actor is huge,” actress Catherine Deneuve, who starred alongside Depardieu in The Last Metro, said of him.
Depardieu announced in late 2012 that he was “giving his passport back” to protest against French tax rates, went into tax exile in Belgium and became a citizen of Russia which he called “a great democracy”, regularly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After Paris prosecutors reopened the case brought by the actress, an investigating magistrate questioned Depardieu on 16 December and, finding “serious and corroborated evidence”, brought the charges.
Police also proceeded to a confrontation between Depardieu and his alleged victim, a judicial source said.
Depardieu is the father of four, including the actor Guillaume Depardieu who died in 2008.
Besides his prolific acting career, he has also been a winemaker, restaurant owner and a singer.
Just over three years since the #MeToo movement broke taboos around rape across the world, France is seeing an outpouring of stories and a wide-ranging debate about sex, power and consent.
Depardieu, 72, is among France’s most well-known and controversial stars.
