France’s Macron says film star Depardieu target of a ‘manhunt’
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French actor Gerard Depardieu was charged with rape in 2020 and has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than a dozen women.
PHOTO: AFP
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PARIS – French President Emmanuel Macron said on Dec 20 that French film icon Gerard Depardieu, who is accused of rape, has become the target of a manhunt as the actor faces fresh scrutiny over his sexist comments.
“You will never see me participate in a manhunt,” Mr Macron told the France 5 broadcaster, when asked about possibly stripping Depardieu of a state award.
“I hate that kind of thing,” he added.
The award, France’s Legion of Honour, which Depardieu received in 1996, “is not a moral tool”, Mr Macron said.
But in 2017, Mr Macron withdrew the Legion of Honour from Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein after a series of accusations of sexual harassment and rape.
Last week, French Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak said the 74-year-old actor’s behaviour shamed France, noting that he might be stripped of the Legion, which is the country’s top award.
Depardieu, an icon of French cinema with more than 200 films to his name, was charged with rape in 2020, and has been accused of sexual harassment and assault
A television report released in December, which included footage of him making sexist comments, has thrown the allegations back into the limelight and reignited a debate about sexism in French cinema.
Broadcaster France 2 showed the actor on a 2018 trip to North Korea repeatedly making explicit sexual comments in the presence of a female interpreter and sexualising a small girl riding a horse.
Depardieu in October rejected all accusations against him and, since the documentary aired, his family has denounced an “unprecedented conspiracy” against him.
Over the weekend, a Belgian municipality stripped the actor of the title of honorary citizen,
On Dec 19, Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza said she had filed a complaint with the Spanish police on Dec 14, claiming that Depardieu raped her in Paris in 1995, when she interviewed him for the magazine Cinemania. AFP
