Gérard Depardieu #

Introduction #

Gérard Depardieu, one of the most prominent actors in French cinema history, was convicted of sexual assault by a Paris criminal court on May 13, 2025, for assaults on two women during the 2021 filming of “Les Volets Verts” (The Green Shutters), and received an 18-month suspended prison sentence. The same court acquitted him of the allegations brought by a third woman, and he has appealed. It was the first sexual-assault trial of the 76-year-old star’s career, and it landed as a landmark moment for France’s long-stalled reckoning with #MeToo — the verdict coming hours before the Cannes film festival opened.

Background Information #

Born on December 27, 1948, in Châteauroux, central France, Depardieu rose from a working-class childhood to become an overnight star with “Going Places” (1974) and one of Europe’s most prolific leading men, with more than 200 films since 1967. His honors include César Awards for “The Last Metro” (1980) and “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1990), a Best Actor award at Cannes for the latter, and a Golden Globe for “Green Card” (1990). Accusations of sexual misconduct date back to the 1990s, though formal complaints did not develop until the late 2010s; in December 2020, French authorities charged him with rape in a separate case. Controversies since 2020 damaged his standing in France and abroad, and in 2023 he was stripped of the National Order of Quebec.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

Adjudicated vs. alleged. The convictions in this section are matters of court record: on May 13, 2025, the Paris criminal court found Gérard Depardieu guilty of sexually assaulting two women on the set of “Les Volets Verts” and acquitted him of the allegations brought by a third woman. The acquitted claims remain unproven allegations. A separate alleged rape case from 2020 is also an allegation only — it has never been adjudicated, and Depardieu denies it.

The assaults for which he was convicted took place in September 2021, during production of “Les Volets Verts.” The two complainants were a 54-year-old set decorator, identified as Amélie, and a 34-year-old assistant director who chose to remain anonymous under the name Sarah. Amélie told the court that after a minor argument, Depardieu caught her between his legs and held her by the hips; Sarah testified that he touched her buttocks and breasts through her clothes on three separate occasions. The court found there was no reason to doubt the word of the two women, and that the actor’s own accounts had changed over time.

On May 13, 2025, the court found him guilty of sexually assaulting both women and imposed an 18-month suspended jail term, placed him on a sex-offender registry, and ordered him to pay €1,000 in compensation to each woman for “secondary victimisation” — covering the additional suffering they endured from the trial itself. Depardieu, who was working on a film set in the Azores when the verdict came, denied the allegations throughout, saying he might have touched the women accidentally or to keep his balance; his lawyer Jérémie Assous accused the women of lying during their evidence and announced an appeal. The court acquitted him of the allegations brought by a third complainant, and those claims must be treated as unproven. Separate from the trial entirely, the alleged rape case from 2020 remains pending and could come to trial in the future; it is an allegation, not a finding.

Public Reaction and Consequences #

Amélie told reporters after the verdict that she was “very moved” and considered it “a victory, a major step forward.” Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, the lawyer for the two women, said she hoped the verdict marked the end of impunity for an artist in the film industry: “It’s a victory for two women on a film set but it’s a victory for all the women behind this case and I’m thinking of all of Depardieu’s other victims.” NPR reported that the verdict marked a major moment for France’s long-stalled reckoning with #MeToo and with how assault is defined, particularly in the film industry; Durrieu-Diebolt added: “With this decision, we can no longer say [that Gérard Depardieu] is not a sexual abuser.”

Support for the actor did not vanish with the verdict. Fanny Ardant, his co-star and defence witness, had said at trial: “Genius - in whatever form it takes - carries within it an element of the extravagant, the untamed, the dangerous. (Depardieu) is the monster and the saint.” Brigitte Bardot deplored how “talented people who touch the buttocks of a girl are consigned to the deepest dungeon,” adding, “Feminism isn’t my thing," Bardot said. "Personally, I like men.” Depardieu himself, at the end of the hearings, said: “My name has been dragged through the mud by lies and insults.” Professional consequences had already followed: in April 2023 he was excluded from the promotion of his film “Umami,” and in March 2025, while on trial, it was reported he had not worked on a film since completing “Les Volets Verts” in 2021.

Current Status #

Depardieu’s conviction is on appeal — the appeal was announced by his lawyer after the May 13, 2025 verdict. The separate alleged rape case from 2020 remains pending and could still come to trial; it is an allegation that has never been tested in court.

Professionally, the banishment did not hold: just before the verdict, it was reported he had begun working on a film directed by Fanny Ardant, in which he plays a magician on a mysterious island — his first film work in roughly four years. In May 2025 he began production on that film, “Elle regardait sans plus rien voir,” a Portuguese-French coproduction.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

The verdict closed a circle that had been tightening since his 2020 rape charge in the still-pending case. Before it, the accumulation of accusations had already cost him: exclusion from his own film’s promotion in 2023, disrupted concerts and cancelled shows, the loss of the National Order of Quebec, and roughly four years without work on a film. The May 2025 judgment turned a screen icon into a convicted sex offender on the French registry, with a suspended prison sentence, though the appeal means the legal story is not over. He returned to work almost immediately, in production on the Portuguese-French co-production with Ardant, but the record now reads differently: a court has found that he did not appear to grasp the notion of consent, and that judgment now competes with his decades-long standing as an icon of French cinema.