Renowned French actor says Depardieu’s sex assault case underlines a need for change

PARIS — Renowned French actor Anouk Grinberg says the sexual assault trial against fellow actor Gérard Depardieu reflects the slow path toward awareness of sex abuse in France, especially in the film industry, after years of silence.

Grinberg, 61, who has appeared in about 30 films, spoke Monday at what was supposed to be the start of Depardieu’s trial but which was postponed until March because of concerns over the 75-year-old actor’s health.

She has known Depardieu for over three decades, appearing with him in a 1991 film and in the film “The Green Shutters.” The trial centers around the alleged sexual assault of two women, a production designer and a director’s assistant, on the set of the latter film in 2021.

Depardieu has denied any wrongdoing.

In recent months, Grinberg has decided to speak out on the need for change, joining other French actors who decided to shine a light on the repulsive underside of the country’s industry.

“For several years, I witnessed this … without any reaction, like everyone else,” she told The Associated Press. “Because I was overwhelmed by the violence and also because at the time, we didn’t think of it as violence.”

Yet with the #MeToo movement and more women speaking out, something “has changed” in recent years, she said. “And I’ve taken the measure of this violence.”

Grinberg also said she personally knows actor Charlotte Arnould, who accuses Depardieu of two rapes allegedly committed in August 2018 in a separate case. Depardieu was charged in 2020 with rape and sexual assault in that case, but a magistrate has yet to decide whether to send it to trial.

“What’s complicated in cases of sexual violence is that most of the time, women don’t move, don’t defend themselves. And it’s not because they consent, it’s because they’re just petrified. Something has died inside them, paralyzed by terror, by disgust,” Grinberg said.

“That’s where we have to educate the society as well as the justice system,” she added.

Grinberg described with graphic details Depardieu’s obscene comments she said he kept making on “The Green Shutters” film set.

“The society as a whole has really been a great accomplice in these actions, these excesses, these deviances,” Grinberg said. “I’ve been a witness, on movie sets who were entirely silent or sniggering at this verbal violence.”

She said many in the cinema world remained silent because they were afraid they would not be able to work anymore if they spoke out against powerful people in the industry.

Depardieu’s trial shows that times have changed, especially since the alleged victims did not have high-profile roles. The “little hands” working in the cinema industry “are speaking out and saying enough is enough. Enough is really enough,” Grinberg said.

Earlier this year, French actor Judith Godrèche called on France’s film industry to “face the truth” on sexual violence and physical abuse during the Cesar Awards ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars. “We can decide that men accused of rape no longer rule the (French) cinema,” Godrèche said.

Last year, one of France’s top actors, Adèle Haenel, announced she was quitting French film industry that she denounced for “complacency toward sexual aggressors.”

Haenel, star of the 2019 Cannes entry “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” published an open letter in the Telerama magazine in which she said Cannes and other pillars of the French film industry are “ready to do anything to defend their rapist chiefs.”