The French movie star Gérard Depardieu admitted grabbing a female colleague by the hips and insulting her professional abilities but denied accusations of sexual assault, as he testified in court on Tuesday for the first time since a number of women have filed police complaints against him.
Accusations against Mr. Depardieu have mounted since the #MeToo movement arrived in the country and articles criticizing his behavior began to appear in the French press. At least six women have filed complaints with the police accusing Mr. Depardieu of rape, sexual harassment and assault. He has consistently denied all the charges.
In a Paris court on Tuesday, he faced one of two women who have accused him of sexual assault in this case. Amélie, a set decorator who has been identified only by her first name, has accused Mr. Depardieu of groping her on the set of “Les Volets Verts,” a 2022 film they both worked on. The actor said he grabbed her to keep from slipping and to ensure she could hear him. If found guilty, he faces up to five years of prison and a fine of 75,000 euros, about $81,000.
Mr. Depardieu is among France’s most famous actors, starring in over 230 movies and winning dozens of awards and accolades, driven in part by his unfiltered personality and bawdy sense of humor. For many, the court case against him seems like a sign of the progress that #MeToo has finally made in the country, where it met much resistance.
Sitting on a special cube-like stool that he brought with him for the trial, Mr. Depardieu told the court that his reputation had been ruined by a movement that he said was “becoming a terror” and that painted him unjustly. “It’s been three years since I’ve worked,” said Mr. Depardieu, 76.
In their testimony, Mr. Depardieu and Amélie painted very different pictures of what happened.
Amélie, 54, told the court that she had been working on the film set in 2021 and that Mr. Depardieu was sitting on his cube-stool in the hall and loudly making bawdy statements in between his takes.
“It’s so hot, I can’t get an erection,” she alleged he said at one point. Amélie also accused him of saying, “I can make a woman orgasm without touching her.”
After an initial interaction with him over a parasol she was looking for, the decorator said she had tried to avoid the actor but had to pass him to leave the building at the end of her day. She said he called her over, grabbed her by the waist, hauled her toward him and then clamped his legs around her.
Amélie said she had felt trapped and terrified as he ran his hands around her buttocks and groin, and then up to her chest, saying, “Come touch my parasol.”
“I was petrified,” she said in court. Later, what stayed with her, she added, was that “he sensed my fear.”
“I saw his eyes light up,” she said. “He enjoyed scaring me.”
A colleague advised her to go to the police, but she said she had not wanted to cause the filming to stop abruptly. Instead, she finished the film, and then fell into a mental fog and depression, unable to work for about two years, she said.
Amélie went to the police last year, after hearing about the case of another woman, Charlotte Arnould, who had accused Mr. Depardieu of rape in 2018. (Mr. Depardieu has denied the accusation but the investigation into the accusations is ongoing.)
“To shut up was to be complicit to that,” she said in court, “and I couldn’t be complicit.”
Mr. Depardieu offered a very different version of his interaction with Amélie that was sometimes hard to follow.
The actor said it had been hot on the set at the end of a long week and he had been in a foul temper and screaming for a fan. He said he had sometimes shouted vulgarities to get the set moving, but they were “not addressed to her.”
Mr. Depardieu said he had been annoyed by the set decorator because the room where the shoot was next supposed to happen was not well-prepared and it was already late.
“You have to know if you want to do flea market stuff or if you want to be a professional decorator. Who do you think you are?” he recalled telling her. Later, he said, “I found the work sucked.”
The actor said he had grabbed her by the hips in order “to not slip” and also to bring her closer so he would not have to yell. He said he had reprimanded her, but never, at any moment, trapped her with his legs or touched her sexual body parts.
“I don’t see why I’d want to grope a woman,” he said. “I’m not someone who rubs himself against others on the subway.”
Mr. Depardieu said that he had weighed 150 kilograms and would not have been able to grab Amélie between his thighs “with the belly I had.”
The trial will continue on Wednesday.
