French actor Gérard Depardieu has been charged with rape and sexual assault, allegedly committed in 2018 against an actress in her 20s.
The case reopened last summer after being dropped the previous year for lack of evidence. The unidentified actress accuses Depardieu of having raped and assaulted her at his Parisian home on two separate occasions in August 2018.
Depardieu’s lawyer, Hervé Temime, said his client, who is free but under judicial supervision, “completely rejects the accusations.”
The actor denies the allegations. “I am innocent and I have nothing to fear,” he told Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Depardieu has appeared in 200 films over six decades and won a Golden Globe for his performance in “Green Card,” a 1990 English-language romantic comedy co-starring Andie MacDowell.
Depardieu’s lawyer Hervé Temime has previously said that the actor “absolutely denies any rape, any sexual assault, any crime.” In 2014, he played the leading role in “Welcome to New York,” the film inspired by the life of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was accused in 2011 of sexually assaulting a hotel maid.