14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- AU Financial Review
The sordid fall of ‘sacred monster' Gerard Depardieu
For decades, Gerard Depardieu seemed able to shrug off any scandal. From intoxicated motorcycle crashes to friendships with despots and being bundled off a flight for drunkenly urinating in the cabin, nothing seemed to derail France's most famous actor and bon vivant.
The rotund film star was, to generations of Frenchmen and women, truly a larger-than-life hero with a boundless appetite and no interest in being bound by society's mores. The apparent charm of his excesses – combined with his performances in more than 250 films, including The Woman Next Door and Cyrano de Bergerac – meant that many of his compatriots were eating out of the palm of his meaty paw.
