PARIS – The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday that French actor Gerard Depardieu was charged in December with rape and sexual assault after authorities reactivated a 2018 investigation that was initially closed.
The office told the Associated Press that Depardieu was not arrested when he received preliminary charges on December 16.
The prosecution handled the charges after the case leaked to French media.
French media reports said the charges were related to allegations made by an actress in her 20s on that date until 2018. An initial investigation against the star was withdrawn in 2019 for lack of evidence, but was later revived.
French newspaper Le Parisien and broadcaster BFM TV said the woman alleged that Depardieu assaulted her on August 7 and 13, 2018 at her home in Paris. The two met when Depardieu gave a master class at his school, BFM TV reported.
The actress, who was not identified, filed a complaint with details of alleged rape and assault in August 2018 in the city of Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. The investigation was taken over by investigators from Paris, but was soon abandoned.
Depardieu’s lawyer, Hervé Temime, was not immediately available for comment, but he said earlier that the actor “absolutely denies any rape, sexual assault, any crime”.
Depardieu, 72, is among France’s best-known and most controversial stars.
He has appeared in 200 films over six decades and is among the few French actors who have made their name in Hollywood. He won a Golden Globe for his performance in “Green Card”, a romantic comedy in English from 1990 co-starring Andie MacDowell.
His first major success in France was “Les Valseuses” (“Going Places”), Bertrand Blier’s classic farce about two wandering bandits.
Before crossing the Atlantic to star in “Green Card”, Depardieu played a number of roles, from Jean Valjean, the thief who became a saint in “The Miserable”, to Christopher Columbus.
In 2014, he played the lead role in “Welcome to New York”, the film inspired by the life of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former director of the International Monetary Fund who was accused in 2011 of sexually assaulting a hotel employee.