Paris prosecutors are investigating the apparent suicide of an actress who alleged she was sexually assaulted decades ago by Gérard Depardieu.
Emmanuelle Debever, who was 60, died in hospital on 7 December after she was found in the River Seine in Paris.
Prosecutors said the cause of her death was being investigated due to “media reports” of complaints she made against the actor in 2019.
There is no suggestion that any crime has been committed.
About a week before her death, Debever disappeared from her home and left a note.
On the day she died, France 2 television broadcast a documentary containing several claims against Depardieu of sexual misconduct.
The documentary reported for the first time that Charlotte Arnould, also an actress, filed a suit against Depardieu in 2018 alleging rape.
The programme also showed the actor using lewd language in the presence of women during filming in North Korea in 2018.
Several figures from French cinema have distanced themselves from Depardieu since its broadcast.
The actor has repeatedly denied abusing women and his former agent has accused the media of engaging in a show trial.
France Télévisions said it was suspending the broadcast of Depardieu’s films.
Justine Becattini, the presenter of the popular show France Has Got Talent, said images of Depardieu watching a young girl riding a horse in North Korea made her “want to vomit.”
François Legault, the premier of the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec, on Wednesday said that Depardieu was being excluded from the National Order of Quebec because of his “scandalous remarks”.
Debever’s allegations were not part of the documentary. In 2019, she alleged on Facebook that Depardieu had fondled her while they were shooting the film Danton in 1982.
The actress, who played Depardieu’s young second wife in Danton, said: “The superstar indulged himself during the shoot. Making the most of the privacy inside a carriage. Slipping his paw under my skirts the better to feel me up.”
Debever made a handful of films and television programmes in the 1980s, but at the end of the decade disappeared from public view.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said: “In the media it has been reported that the actress had complained of inappropriate behaviour by Gérard Depardieu.
“In view of this new element, an investigation into the cause of her death has been opened.”
Depardieu, who has made more than 200 films since the early 1970s including Green Card and Cyrano de Bergerac, is separately facing two investigations for rape and sexual assault.
In October he wrote an open letter to Le Figaro newspaper in which he denied all allegations against him.
“All my life I have been provocative, over-the-top, at times crude,” he said. “I have often done what others did not dare to do: test limits, shake up accepted wisdom …. But I am not a rapist or a predator.”
“Never, ever have I abused a woman,” the actor wrote. “To the media court, to the lynching that has been reserved for me, I have only my word to defend myself.”
He has not commented on the allegations in the documentary.
Source: BBC
