After complaints of rape and sexual violence, the French actor Gérard Depardieu is threatened with exclusion from the Legion of Honor.
A committee of the Order of the Legion of Honor will decide in disciplinary proceedings whether Depardieu’s membership should be suspended or completely revoked, France’s Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak said on Friday on the France 5 television channel. The minister described the actor’s behavior towards women as a “disgrace for France.” .
Induction into the Legion of Honor is the highest honor awarded in France. Depardieu was inducted into the Legion of Honor by then President Jacques Chirac in 1996. The Code of the Legion of Honor stipulates that “conduct contrary to honor” can be punished with a reprimand, suspension of membership or expulsion.
France’s culture minister is “disgusted” by Gérard Depardieu’s behavior
Culture Minister Abdul Malak said he was “disgusted” by Depardieu’s disrespectful and sexist treatment of women in a recent documentary broadcast by France 2. In the documentary, the actor can be seen making numerous vulgar comments to his young translator while on a filming trip in North Korea. “I weigh 124 kilos, 126 with an erection,” he says, for example. About a ten-year-old girl on a horse says: “When it gallops, she has an orgasm.”
Last week, actress Hélène Darras reported Depardieu for sexual assault during filming in 2007. The actress Charlotte Arnould had already reported him for rape in 2018. Depardieu denies all allegations. Arnould had had sex with him willingly, he explained. More than twelve other women have accused Depardieu of sexual assault in the media, but have not yet filed a complaint.
“Gérard Depardieu’s problematic behavior was well known in the French cinema world,” said the head of the producers’ union, Marc Missionnier, in the documentary.
Depardieu has worked with France’s most famous directors and actresses and has made more than 200 films. In it he embodied the eloquent Cyrano de Bergerac as well as a washed-up pop singer, a slaughterhouse worker or an Alzheimer’s patient.
Source: Stern
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