French actor Gérard Depardieu has been charged with rape and sexual assault as part of a criminal investigation first opened against him in 2018.
The 72-year-old actor was formally charged in December for a pair of alleged incidents in August 2018 that involved a then-22-year-old woman at his Parisian home. Agence France-Presse on Tuesday was first to report the news of the charges, citing a judicial source. The Associated Press later confirmed the news.
A preliminary investigation was opened against Depardieu in 2018 after a woman filed a complaint over the two alleged incidents, which she said took place during casting tryouts. Depardieu, who earned an Oscar nomination in 1991 for his role in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” denied the allegations at the time.
The investigation was dropped the following year due to a lack of evidence, prosecutors said at the time. It was reopened in October 2020 after Depardieu’s accuser filed a new complaint that included civil proceedings, which under French law typically leads to a case being reexamined by an investigating magistrate, as AFP reported at the time.
Depardieu’s attorney, following news of the investigation’s reopening last fall, dismissed the appointment of an investigating magistrate as a “non-event.”