“I don’t see why I would go around groping a woman, her buttocks, her breasts,” Depardieu said in his first statement at the trial, in which he is charged with sexual assault on two women during the shooting of a film in 2021.
“I’m not somebody who rubs himself against others on the metro,” he added.
Depardieu said he was “not like that” in response to the accusations, adding that “there are vices that are alien to me”.
Depardieu, 76, who has acted in more than 200 films and television series, has been accused of improper behaviour by around 20 women but this is the first case to come to trial.
“I deny all of it,” the actor, dressed in black, said in the packed courtroom.
He is the highest-profile figure to face accusations in French cinema’s response to the #MeToo movement, which he told the court on Tuesday “will become a reign of terror”.
The trial relates to charges of sexual assault during the filming in 2021 of “Les Volets Verts” (“The Green Shutters”) by director Jean Becker.
Anouk Grinberg, a prominent actor who appeared in the film, has backed the two plaintiffs – a set dresser, 54, identified only as Amelie, and a 34-year-old assistant director. Both women allege sexual violence.
Another prominent actor Fanny Ardant is expected to testify in favour of Depardieu later this week. (AFP)
