Famous French actor says Depardieu sexual assault case highlights need for change

PARIS (AP) — Acclaimed French actor Anouk Greenberg says the sexual assault trial against fellow actor Gerard Depardieu reflects the slow path to awareness of sexual violence in France, particularly in the film industry, after years of silence.

Greenberg, 61, who has appeared in about 30 films, spoke Monday at Depardieu’s trial, which was scheduled to begin but was delayed until March due to concerns about the 75-year-old actor’s health.

She has known Depardieu for more than three decades, having starred with him in the 1991 film and Green Shutters. The lawsuit centers on the alleged sexual assault of two women, a production designer and an assistant director, on the set of the latest film in 2021.

Depardieu denies any wrongdoing.

In recent months, Greenberg has decided to speak out about the need for change, joining other French actors who have decided shed light on the repulsive underside industry of the country.

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

However, she said, thanks to the #MeToo movement and more women speaking out, something has “changed” in recent years. “And I took the measure of this violence.”

Greenberg also said she personally knows actress Charlotte Arnoux, who accuses Depardieu of two rapes allegedly committed in August 2018 in a separate case. Depardieu was charged with rape and sexual assault in the case in 2020, but a magistrate has yet to decide whether to send him to trial.

“What is difficult in cases of sexual assault is that in most cases the women do not move or defend themselves. And this is not because they agree, but because they are simply petrified. Something died inside them, paralyzed by horror and disgust,” Greenberg said.

“This is where we have to educate the community as well as the justice system,” she added.

Greenberg detailed lewd comments Depardieu said she continued to make on the set of Green Shutters.

“Society as a whole has truly been a great accomplice to these actions, these excesses, these aberrations,” Greenberg said. “I witnessed people on set who were completely silent or giggling at this verbal abuse.”

She said many in the film world remain silent because they fear they won’t be able to work anymore if they speak 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 “hands” who work in the film industry are “speaking up and saying enough is enough. Enough actually,” Greenberg said.

Earlier this year, French actress Judith Godrèche addressed the French film industry. “face the truth” about sexual assault and physical assault during the Cesar Awards, France’s version of the Oscars. “We can decide that men accused of rape no longer run (French) cinema,” Godrèche said.

Last year, one of France’s best actresses, Adele Haenel, announced that she leaving the French film industry which she accused of “complacency towards sexual predators”.

Haenel, the star of the 2019 Cannes competition Portrait of a Lady on Fire, published an open letter in Teleram magazine in which she said Cannes and other pillars of the French film industry are “willing to do anything to protect their abusive leaders. »