Gérard Depardieu

Born into poverty in Châteauroux in 1948, Depardieu drifted through a hard youth before landing in Paris and finding his way to acting. The 1974 film Going Places made him a star overnight. Through the eighties and nineties he became the face of French cinema - César wins for The Last Metro and Cyrano de Bergerac, a Cannes prize, an Oscar nomination, then a Golden Globe for Green Card as he crossed into Hollywood. He worked with Truffaut, Godard, Bertolucci, Ridley Scott, racking up 60 films that sold over a million tickets each in France, second only to Louis de Funès at the French box office. In 2013 he took Russian citizenship and became a cultural ambassador of Montenegro, a tax exile that sparked fury at home, compounded by his public support of Putin. Sexual misconduct accusations surfaced in the nineties but gained legal traction in 2020 when French authorities charged him with rape; he denied it. In May 2025 he was convicted of sexual assault against two women in a separate case and has appealed.