There’s some way to go, however; last month a French Parliamentary report, led by French MP Sandrine Rousseau, found that abuse was “endemic” across the entire French entertainment industry, and that attitudes were “barely evolving” despite the #MeToo movement. The detailed report had 86 recommendations for change, including greater protections for child actors and the use of intimacy co-ordinators as standard for sex scenes in cinema, and theatre (as of December 2023, only four of them were reported as working across the whole of France, compared with 100 in the US entertainment industry).
Depardieu also had some high-profile defenders; President Macron said in 2024 that the actor “made France proud”. Seventy-six-year-old actor Fanny Ardant is one of his most steadfast supporters – Depardieu was absent from the verdict making a film with her in the Azores yesterday – and she came to court to support him, alongside his Cyrano de Bergerac co-star Vincent Perez. Brigitte Bardot, a French film star of the 1950s and 60s, also publicly defended him.
Getty ImagesBut Jackson points to a reaction to an event during the Depardieu trial, which she says is significant of a societal shift. She says there was condemnation when Depardieu’s lawyer Jérémie Assous accused the actor’s two female victims in the court case, a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant director, of “hysteria”, being “liars” and working for the cause of “rabid feminism”.
“I think Depardieu is increasingly seen as from a different era and so are his lawyers,” she says. “They were called sexist in the way they spoke to the plaintiffs, calling them feminists as if it was a bad thing. And it added to his troubles, because the judge called it out and imposed an extra fine [of €2,000] because of it. It highlights the generational shift that’s happening in France. His supporters are actors from the older generation such as Ardant and Bardot.”
A few days before Depardieu’s conviction, the 90-year-old Bardot publicly called the actor a “genius” on French TV, and deplored that “talented people who touch the bottom of a girl are consigned to the deepest dungeon”. But this kind of attitude is seen by the young as archaic, says Jackson, and they are less aware of his reputation as a great actor.
“For people over the age of perhaps 50 and 60, Depardieu evokes memories of being a great actor of a certain era, but I don’t know how many younger people are interested in that story anymore,” she says.