Famous French actor Gérard Depardieu denied the numerous rape and sexual assault allegations made against him in recent years, RadarOnline.com can report.
In a surprising development to come after 14 different women accused the 74-year-old actor of sexual misconduct between 2004 and 2022, Depardieu penned an open letter to a French newspaper over the weekend refuting the shocking accusations.
“I can no longer allow what I hear, what I have read about myself for several months,” Depardieu wrote in the open letter to Le Figaro on Sunday. “I thought I didn’t care, but no, actually no. This all gets to me. Worse still, it wipes me out.”
Actress Charlotte Arnould, one of Depardieu’s many alleged victims, accused the French actor of rape in 2018. That allegation is currently making its way through the courts, according to Deadline.
“Today, I can no longer sing Barbara because a woman who wanted to sing Barbara with me accused me of rape,” the Cyrano de Bergerac star continued, although he did not explicitly refer to Arnould by name. “I finally want to tell you my truth. I have never, ever abused a woman.”
“Hurting a woman would be like kicking my own mother in the stomach,” Depardieu explained further. “A woman came to my house for the first time, with a light step, going up to my room of her own free will. She says today that she was raped there. She came back a second time.”
“There has never been any coercion, violence, or protest between us. She wanted to sing Barbara’s songs at the Cirque d’Hiver with me. I told her no…She filed a complaint.”
The embattled Danton actor also addressed the numerous accusations against him connected to his alleged behavior on set.
“I’ve often done that which others wouldn’t dare to do: pushed limits, shaken certitudes, habits on the set between two takes, between two tensions to get a laugh,” Depardieu wrote on Sunday.
“Not everyone laughed,” he acknowledged. “If, in believing to live the present intensely, I hurt, or shocked someone, whoever it was, it was never my intention to hurt, and I beg you to excuse me for behaving like a child who wanted to have fun in a gallery.”
Meanwhile, Arnould’s lawyer said that Depardieu’s 28-year-old accuser was “shocked and scandalized” by the 74-year-old’s open letter this weekend.
“Mr. Depardieu says he is exposing his truth, but it is certainly not Charlotte’s truth and it will certainly not be the one that will be upheld by the courts,” Arnould’s lawyer, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, told France Info early Monday morning.
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Depardieu’s lawyers said that many of the accusations were founded on “very subjective assessments and/or moral judgments.”
“He formally denies all the charges likely to fall under criminal law,” his defense team added at the time.