The French actor Gérard Depardieu has been ordered to stand trial on charges of raping and sexually assaulting the actor Charlotte Arnould at his Paris home in 2018. Depardieu, France’s biggest film star, has been under investigation in the case since 2020. A trial date has not yet been set.
Arnould, whose father was a friend of Depardieu, reported the actor to police in August 2018, days after the alleged attacks. She was 22 at the time, and Depardieu was 70. In an open letter to Le Figaro in October 2023, Depardieu denied the allegations, saying any encounter with Arnould had been consensual. “Never, ever, have I abused a woman,” he wrote.
Carine Durrieu Diebolt, Arnould’s lawyer, said the judge had ordered a trial at Paris’s criminal court for sexual assault and rape by digital penetration on 7 and 13 August 2018. Durrieu Diebolt said she and Arnould were relieved and confident about the case. Le Monde reported that the state prosecutor’s recommendation for a trial had stated that Depardieu “constrained the victim to submit to his will to impose sexual acts on her that she did not have the capacity to oppose”.
Arnould, now 29, wrote on social media: “Seven years later, seven years of horror and hell … I think I’m having trouble realising how huge this is. I’m relieved.” In a separate trial earlier this year, Depardieu was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant director during the shooting of the feature film Les Volets Verts in Paris in September 2021. He received an 18-month suspended sentence and was ordered to register as a sex offender.
Depardieu has denied all allegations of sexual assault. His conviction in May was seen as a turning point for the #MeToo movement in France. In December 2023, President Emmanuel Macron defended Depardieu, saying “he makes France proud”. Depardieu has attacked the #MeToo movement, calling it a “terror”. He plans to appeal against his May conviction.
