French film star Brigitte Bardot has defended actors who ‘grab a girl’s bottom’ just one day before Gérard Depardieu is due to receive the verdict of his sexual assault trial.
Depardieu, 76, who has appeared in over 200 films and television series, is facing charges of sexually assaulting two women during a 2021 film shoot – which he denies.
The Count Of Monte Cristo actor has been accused of improper behaviour by around 20 women, but this is the first case to reach trial.
Ms Bardot, 90, also defended French actor and director Nicolas Bedos, who was found guilty in October 2024 of sexually assaulting two women.
In her first interview in 11 years, Ms Bardot told BFMTV: ‘Feminism is not my thing. People with talent who grab a girl’s bottom are thrown into the bottom of the ditch. We could at least let them carry on living. They can’t live any more.’
The actress, who was once an international sex symbol before retiring in 1973, believes those men ‘won’t find much work’ after public backlash.
Ms Bardot made her breakthrough in 1952 in the film The Girl In The Bikini and became one of the most famous French postwar film stars.
She once starred alongside Depardieu in the 1972 comedy film The Annuity.
French film star Brigitte Bardot has defended actors who ‘grab a girl’s bottom’ just one day before Gérard Depardieu is due to receive the verdict of his sexual assault trial
French actor Gerard Depardieu arrives on the day of his trial for two sexual assaults allegedly committed on the set of the film ‘Les Volets Verts’, at the courthouse in Paris, France, March 24
Around 20 women have come forward, but many cases have been dropped due to France’s statute of limitations
French President Emmanuel Macron came under fire in 2023 after he praised Depardieu as a great actor and described him as the target of a ‘manhunt’.
Ms Bardot’s views appear to align with the other older members of the French film industry who reject what they see as an American-inspired puritan intolerance of flirtation.
Actress Catherine Deneuve, 81, signed a text along with 100 other women in 2018 which defended men’s ‘freedom to bother’ women as essential to seduction.
Ms Bardot has previously called the accusations put forward by actresses against men ‘hypocritical, ridiculous and without interest’.
After testimony from 140 people, a French parliamentary inquiry last month concluded sexual violence remained ‘systematic, endemic and persistent’ in the French arts world.
Erwan Balanant, the centrist MP who headed the inquiry, said: ‘The system is a meat grinder that consumes people.’
Depardieu’s trial revolves around accusations of sexual assault during the filming of Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in 2021, directed by Jean Becker.
Two woman – a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant director – claim Depardieu subjected them to sexual violence on set.
Ms Bardot has previously called the accusations put forward by actresses against men ‘hypocritical, ridiculous and without interest’
Ms Bardot, 90, also defended French actor and director Nicolas Bedos (pictured), who was found guilty in October 2024 of sexually assaulting two women
In her first interview in 11 years, Ms Bardot told BFMTV: ‘Feminism is not my thing. People with talent who grab a girl’s bottom are thrown into the bottom of the ditch. We could at least let them carry on living. They can’t live any more’
Depardieu has been accused of improper behaviour by around 20 women, but this is the first case to reach trial
Prominent French actress Anouk Grinberg, who also starred in the film, has publicly supported the accusers, claiming Depardieu routinely made ‘salacious remarks’ during filming. She has accused producers of knowingly ‘hiring an abuser’.
The set dresser alleged the actor was openly making crude remarks on set, and at one point loudly complained he ‘couldn’t even get it up’ because of the heat.
She claimed he boasted he could ‘give women an orgasm without touching them’ and that an hour later Depardieu ‘brutally grabbed’ her.
The actor pinned her by ‘closing his legs’ around her before groping her waist and her stomach, continuing up to her breasts, she added.
She said Depardieu made ‘obscene remarks’ including: ‘Come and touch my big parasol. I’ll stick it in your p****.’
She described the actor’s bodyguards dragging him away as he shouted: ‘We’ll see each other again, my dear.’
The second accuser, the assistant director, has also accused Depardieu of sexual violence, though details of her allegations have not yet been made public.
In August 2024, French prosecutors called for movie star Depardieu to stand trial for raping a young actress over two days at his Paris home.
French President Emmanuel Macron came under fire in 2023 after he praised Depardieu as a great actor and described him as the target of a ‘manhunt’
Prominent French actress Anouk Grinberg, who also starred in the film, has publicly supported the accusers, claiming Depardieu routinely made ‘salacious remarks’ during filming
Actor Charlotte Arnould hugs Anouk Grinberg, on the day of the trial of French actor Gerard Depardieu
The alleged victim, Charlotte Arnould, now 29, claims she was raped and sexually assaulted by Depardieu in August 2018.
A source working with Paris prosecutors said it was ‘requested that Gérard Depardieu be referred to the departmental criminal court to be tried for rape by digital penetration and sexual assault on August 7 and 13, 2018.’
The investigation has been going on for a full six years, with evidence including CCTV footage of Depardieu performing a sex act on Ms Arnould at his mansion in August 2018.
Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, Ms Arnould’s lawyer, said the request for trial was ‘the result of a long investigation that made it possible to gather the elements that corroborate my client’s words.’
Ms Durrieu-Diebolt added: ‘For her, it is a huge step forward full of hope, while she waits for the order of the investigating judge that will close the investigation.’
The complaint by Ms Arnoud was initially dismissed, but then reopened when further evidence emerged.
Counsel for Depardieu did not immediately respond to the call for a trial, but the Green Card and Last Metro star has continually claimed that sex with Ms Arnould was consensual.
In 2023, Depardieu broke his silence over claims that he is a serial sex abuser saying: ‘I am neither a rapist nor a predator.’
Activists hold placards as they demonstrate outside the Paris courthouse on the opening day of French actor Gerard Depardieu’s trial
Two woman – a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant director – claim Depardieu subjected them to sexual violence on set
Accusing enemies of subjecting him to a ‘lynching’ in the media, he expressed his anger in an open letter to the French press.
Ms Arnould renounced her legal right to anonymity at the end of 2021, following Depardieu being charged with rape and sexual assault.
Last year, a criminal enquiry was also opened into the suspected suicide of a French actress who had accused Depardieu of sexual violence.
It was feared that the last hours of Emmanuelle Debever, 60, may have been linked to the multiple abuse accusations levelled by women against Depardieu.
She died on December 7th – the exact day a new documentary entitled Gérard Depardieu: The Fall of the Ogre was broadcast across France.
It contained disturbing details of an alleged attack by Depardieu on Ms Debever, when she was still a teenager.
In December, another French actress filed a formal sex attack complaint against Depardieu, saying he treated her like ‘a piece of meat’.
Paris prosecutors confirmed that Hélène Darras, 43, reported Depardieu in September.
The pair appeared together in the 2007 film Disco, when Darras was 26, and allegedly assaulted.
Waiving her legal right to anonymity, Ms Darras told the same Further Investigation (Complément d’enquete) documentary series: ‘He [Depardieu] is unmanageable.
‘He looks at me as if I were a piece of meat. I have an ultra-tight dress, he pulls me closer to him by the waist, then he runs his hand over my hips, over my bum.’
And in December 2023, Spanish journalist and writer Ruth Baza filed a complaint in Spain against the actor for rape, for acts dating back to 1995 in Paris.
