It is not only Gérard Depardieu, but the entire world of cinema who is targeted by Anouk Grinberg. Asked by France Interthe actress returned to the accusations of rape and sexual assault targeting the French actor but also to the silence which surrounded the outrageous behavior of the actor towards women highlighted in the last part of “ Additional investigation” broadcast Thursday on France 2.
“Yes, I saw this show, it didn’t surprise me because he’s like that all the time. All the time. He didn’t wait to be in Korea [du Nord] for being so vulgar, so rude, so aggressive with women,” testifies the actress who was also the companion of director Bertrand Blier. Two complaints for sexual assault and rape were filed by different women against Gérard Depardieu, then than a dozen other women testified in the press. The actor, who denies the facts, has been indicted since 2020 for suspicion of rape and sexual assault on actress Charlotte Arnould.
The deafening silence of the world of cinema
But for Anouk Grinberg, it is also the responsibility of the cinema sector that must be questioned. “On all the film sets he is like that, and on all the film sets, people are indifferent, which really gives food for thought, not only on the monstrosity that Depardieu agrees with, after all, half of the human race, but the other monstrosity, which is that of the people of cinema who are indifferent, indifferent to the harm that is done to women, to the humiliations that are inflicted on them and this indifference, it is incomprehensible, it is deafening », she warns.
“It’s not just him who behaves like a scoundrel with women, it’s all the others who let him be, who let him put his big hand down women’s pants, who let him demolish women for their whole life, and he laughs, while laughter is not a solitary affair.” “The corporatism of this profession should not prevent the truth from emerging. Because we need the truth. Depardieu is a special case, he was one of the sacred monsters of cinema, but that authorized him, and everyone authorized him, to become a monster, period,” the actress further denounces.
A “collateral victim”
Pointed out in “Additional investigation” by Gérard Depardieu’s former agent, Jean-Louis Livi, on her own silence for years, Anouk Grinberg responds: “It is better to have courage 33 years later than ever […] I am an accomplice, I was unwillingly so. I didn’t know how to speak, I was wrong.”
“I kept silent for a long time, even though I knew all this. I am a collateral victim. When we witness this kind of violence, we ourselves are stunned. Truly we are forbidden, we are speechless, in the face of his own violence and in the face of the violence of others who allow it, who are silent, who laugh. And we laugh with the others because otherwise, what happens to you is even worse. Yes I laughed for a few years. I even lived with someone who, really, actively participated in this violence,” she confides, speaking of Bertrand Blier.
The rape of Charlotte Arnould, a “premeditated” act
The actress also returned to the accusations of rape made by Charlotte Arnould. Anouk Grinberg thus recounts that Gérard Depardieu allegedly admitted to the young woman, then suffering from anorexia, that he had been fantasizing about “his little boy’s body” for a week. Charlotte Arnould would then have been the victim of a “premeditated” act, deduced Anouk Grinberg. “Charlotte says that immediately, she became like a four-year-old child again, she could no longer move, and he started raping her again,” continues the actress.
“She was too alone, it wasn’t fair. The world of cinema, which protects Depardieu and more generally the world, must hear what a woman who does not scream is, a woman who does not scream is not a woman who says yes it is a woman who died because a man did not behave,” she concludes.