Background

Depardieu was born in Châteauroux, a small provincial community in central France, on December 27, 1948. His taciturn father, René "Dédé" Depardieu, was a sheet metal worker; his mother, Alice "Lilette" Marillier, came to Châteauroux with her family as refugees during World War II. The couple married in 1944 and had two children - one son and one daughter - before the birth of Gerard. The family lived in cramped quarters and Depardieu's father was not an active parent, so much of the stresses of caring for three small children fell to his mother. Depardieu, who would eventually have five siblings, became the family's charming prankster, earning the nickname of Pétarou, or "Little Firecracker."

Education

When an American Air Force base set up in his hometown, Depardieu became fascinated with Americans and their culture. He and his older brother were regulars both on the base and at social gathering spots popular with the American troops. By the time Depardieu completed his formal schooling in the early 1960s - he completed only grade school, not attending lycée, the French equivalent of high school - he stood nearly six feet tall and could readily pass for several years older than his true age of 13. He attended École d’art dramatique and his classmates included actress Claude Jade and actor Alain Doutey. Depardieu took to petty crime and wandering, working a series of odd jobs such as printer's apprentice, dishwasher, a traveling salesman, and beach club attendant on the Riviera before relocating to Paris at the age of 16.

Depardieu studied acting with Charles Dullin and Jean Laurent Cochet. He also studied at Theatre National Populaire, Paris.

Career

The son of migrant laborers, Depardieu received little formal education and at age 15 went to Paris, where he studied acting. He made his screen debut in the short film Le Beatnik et le minet (1965) and began to appear as a bit player in full-length films in the early 1970s. His performance as a young thug in Les Valseuses (1973; Going Places) brought him his first real notice, and he subsequently appeared in such major films as Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976), François Truffaut’s Le Dernier Métro (1980; The Last Metro), Loulou (1980), Le Retour de Martin Guerre (1981; The Return of Martin Guerre), Andrzej Wajda’s Danton (1983), Jean de Florette (1986), and its sequel, Manon des Sources (1986; Manon of the Spring). He starred in Camille Claudel (1989), and in 1990 he won the best actor award at the Cannes film festival for his role in Cyrano de Bergerac (1990).

Depardieu played a wide variety of roles, including both historical figures (from peasants to the French Revolutionary leader Georges Danton and artist Auguste Rodin) and contemporary figures (from composers to thugs). He was notable for projecting a screen image of masculine strength that was nevertheless imbued with gentleness and sensitivity. He acted in as many as six films a year, and by the late 1980s, he had become the most popular actor in France and had achieved an international reputation.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, Depardieu continued his prolific acting career. His performances in the French films Le Colonel Chabert (1994; Colonel Chabert), about a soldier who returns home from war to find his wife married to another man, and Quand j’étais chanteur (2006; The Singer), were well received in France. In La Môme (2007; also released as La Vie en rose) he portrayed the nightclub impresario who discovered Edith Piaf. He later appeared as a crime boss in the true-life gangster movie L’Instinct de mort (2008; Mesrine: Killer Instinct), as the titular police detective in Claude Chabrol’s thriller Bellamy (2009; Inspector Bellamy), and as a labour activist opposite frequent costar Catherine Deneuve in the comedy Potiche (2010).

Depardieu also took the title role in several biopics, including L’Autre Dumas (2010; Dumas), about Alexandre Dumas père, and Rasputin (2011). Other movies included Mammuth (2010), Valley of Love (2015), Un Beau Soleil intérieur (2017; Let the Sunshine In), and Mon cochon et moi (2018; Saving My Pig). From 2016 to 2018 Depardieu appeared in the Netflix TV series Marseille, a French-language drama about corruption and politics. He also starred in a number of American films, including Green Card (1990), My Father the Hero (1994), Crime Spree (2003), Last Holiday (2006), and Life of Pi (2012).

Seeking to avoid a proposed tax increase in France, Depardieu became a Russian citizen in 2013.

Achievements

• Gerard Depardieu is one of the most prolific character actors in film history, having completed approximately 170 films since 1967.
  
  He was granted citizenship of Russia in January 2013 and became a cultural ambassador of Montenegro during the same month.
  
  Over the years, Depardieu has been a recipient of many esteemed awards like the Golden Globe Award, London Critics Circle Film Award, and Cesar Award and has also been honored as a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur and Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Innocent

    (In his proto-memoir Innocent, world-renowned actor Gérard...)

    2017
  • Gerard Depardieu: My Cookbook

    (In My Cookbook, Depardieu, along with his personal chef, ...)

    2005
  • Monstre 2017

• movie

  • Vatel

    (Starring Uma Thurman, Gerard Depardieu, and Tim Roth, Vat...)

    2000
  • La Femme Musketeer

    (Valentine D'Artagnan - daughter of the renowned French sw...)

    2003
  • Under The Sun Of Satan

    (Donissan, a mediocre seminarist, haunted by Evil and the ...)

    1987
  • Valley Of Love

    (In this mysterious and beautiful examination of a broken ...)

    2015
  • Balzac: A Life of Passion

    (This is the sprawling saga of Honoré de Balzac (Gérard De...)

    2004
  • Dumas

    (When Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet, his ghostwriter,...)

    2012
  • The Last Metro

    (Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve star as members of...)

    1980
  • Tous Les Matins Du Monde

    (All The Mornings in the World tells a provocative tale of...)

    2013
  • La Chevre

    (After unsuccessfully searching for a French tycoon's miss...)

    1985
  • Get Out Your Handkerchiefs

    (A worried husband finds a lover for his depressed wife, b...)

    1978
  • Cyrano de Bergerac

    (Soldier and poet Cyrano de Bergerac (Kevin Kline) is in l...)

    2008
  • Welcome to New York

    (Gérard Depardieu is a powerful, sex-obsessed French World...)

    2015
  • The Count of Monte Cristo

    (A classic tale of injustice, revenge, and retribution, in...)

    1975
  • Green Card

    (A mutually beneficial green-card marriage takes a surpris...)

    1990
  • The Return of Martin Guerre

    (In medieval France, some villagers challenge a man's clai...)

    1982
  • Crash Test Aglae

    (Aglae, a lonely young woman who finds a home with her job...)

    2017
  • The ComDads

    (A desperate woman tells two ex-lovers from her youth that...)

    1983
  • Saint Amour

    (In this screwball comedy starring legendary actor Gerard ...)

    2016
  • À La Vie

    (15 years after surviving the atrocities of Auschwitz - Hé...)

    2016
  • Frank-Étienne Towards Grace

    (Frank-Etienne is a door-to-door salesman on a mission to ...)

    2012
  • My Afternoons with Margueritte

    (My Afternoons with Margueritte is the story of life's ran...)

    2011
  • Small World

    (Sixty-year-old Conrad Lang has Alzheimer's. Memories from...)

    2018
  • Le Pacte Du Silence

    (Bound by blood. Witnesses to terror. Gérard Depardieu sta...)

    2003

• TV series

  • Napoleon

    (A masterful soldier, tactician, and statesmen, Napoleon B...)

    2018

Religion

An early reader of the Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud, Depardieu was a Muslim for two years after he arrived in Paris in the late 1960s. He also later showed interest in Buddhism and Hinduism, and publicly declared his deep interest in Saint-Augustine’s Confessions.

Gerard Depardieu met Pope John Paul II and was quite taken by the holy man. After the Pope said Depardieu reminded him of St. Augustine, the actor vowed to give readings of the saint’s texts. He said: "I will read in the squares and in sacred places, in churches and synagogues, carrying with me only four candles. It will not be a performance but a way of enriching the faithful worldwide."

The Pope's cultural adviser, Cardinal Paul Poupard, suggested a film of the life of the North African bishop who lived a dissolute existence until a meeting with St Ambrose in Milan led to his baptism in 386AD, 13 years before he began the Confessions. The project never made it to the screen, but the Confessions became the actor's bedside reading.

Although Depardieu, whose often troubled emotional life and hedonistic tastes are cataloged regularly by the French press, will talk of the superficial stages in his spiritual journey, he has saved his most revealing remarks for the Catholic press and television.

He said: "Augustine's reflections appeared sublime as they brought me back to my own life,' he told the Catholic daily La Croix. 'Between 15 and 17, I didn't know how to express myself because of emotional hyperactivity. Only speaking the words of others calmed me down."

In the Catholic weekly Le Pélerin, Depardieu said many of the questions he had posed during his film career were answered by Augustine, who lived between 354 and 430 but remained an example of "accuracy and modernity."

He also claimed: "I have a mystical, religious temperament, colored by a persistent temptation to ask: Why? In Augustine, I have rediscovered these questions, the quest for truth - the why of what we are."

Politics

Despite has been involved in the politics of France for many decades - swinging from left to right. He supported Socialist President François Mitterrand in 1987. In 2002 he donated a large sum to the Communist Party. And that same year he called the conservative future President Nicolas Sarkozy "the only capable politician." He also particularly disliked Socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

More recently, he made some waves in the press by moving out of his home country, first to Belgium and finally to Russia where he was granted citizenship. Although many suspect he fled the impending 75% income tax on the super-wealthy, Depardieu claims he left for other reasons, although he’s not a fan of the taxes either. He said: "France is sad, and I think the French are fed up. The lack of conviction. It seems that the government doesn’t know how to do its job."

Regardless of how he felt in the past, he is clearly not currently a fan of the welfare state. In announcing his disagreement with French protests against a rise in the retirement age, he said: "In France, you have Social Security. When you don’t work they pay you. If you go to see the doctor and open your mouth, 15 days off, paid. This is not normal. You have young boys at 15 years old given money, and they stay at home until 35 or 40 years old. I left home at 12 years old. This is insane."

Speaking on French radio, AFP reported that Depardieu claimed that Americans are "a people who have constantly destroyed others," going on to illustrate his point with a selective United States history lesson. "They fought each other, destroyed the Indians. After that they perpetrated slavery, then there was a civil war. ... After that, they were the first to use the atomic bomb. ... No, I prefer being Russian," he said. He added: "If the Europeans stopped listening to the Americans, well, I'd be a lot happier."

Since taking Russian citizenship in 2013 after being outraged by what he saw as a punitive taxation regime in his native France, Depardieu has been a big PR boon for Russian President Vladimir Putin, taking every occasion over the last few years to extol the virtues of his new country and its leader.

In one of his interviews, Depardieu said: "Politics is the beginning of teaching lies and opportunism. I do not believe in politicians; they are the people who are ready to do anything. They would kill their mothers and their fathers. I don’t believe in this idea of someone who is going to do good for others. I don’t believe in ideologies. They scare me. Take Karl Marx, for instance. He’s someone who helped Bolshevism as much as he helped Hitler. It’s the same thing, with two extremes."

Views

When Depardieu was asked whether he believes in love, he said: "Yes, I believe in love," he smiled. "But I don't believe in love for all life."

Quotations: "One of the advantages of my profession is I come into contact with many people."

"My only model for being a father was my father, an illiterate on the margin of society."

"The wine I produce is not for keeping. It's the wine you want when meeting friends for a game of cards."

"I've had affairs. But I'm not the sort of man who has 10,000 affairs."

"I'm curious about people. That's what I've always done since I've been a small boy. I'm curious about others."

"I'm living in the present. I have no ambition. It's true. But I want to live."

"The relationship between an actor and a director is like a love story between a man and a woman. I'm sure sometimes I'm the woman."

"What you eat and drink is 50 percent of life."

"I like the idea of bringing cartoon characters to life... and although the Americans have already attempted this, their culture is not sufficiently humane to make it work."

"At twenty you have many desires which hide the truth, but beyond forty there are only real and fragile truths - your abilities and your failings."

"The stage is like a cage of light. People are no longer afraid of you - they are the ones out there in the dark, watching."

"I never really like the characters I play. I only come to love them afterward."

"Cooking is not difficult. Everyone has taste, even if they don't realize it. Even if you're not a great chef, there's nothing to stop you from understanding the difference between what tastes good and what doesn't."

Membership

Depardieu was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.

• 

  British Film Institute , United Kingdom

Personality

Depardieu is an accomplished winemaker. He also owns two restaurants in Place Gaillon in Paris; they are called "La Fontaine Gaillon" and "L'Ecaille de la Fontaine."

He has his look-alike puppet in the French show Les Guignols de l'info (1988).

In a March 2005 interview with "The Daily Telegraph," Depardieu said he used to drink six bottles of red wine a day, and smoked three packs of cigarettes a day until his heart surgery in 2000.

He speaks Italian fluently.

Depardieu has survived 17 (at the last count) motorbike accidents, a quintuple heart bypass, and a runway accident when his small plane smacked into a Boeing 727 at Madrid airport. He's also seen through a poverty-ravished childhood, a short spell in jail for theft, and a 26-year marriage. Little wonder the French call him "une force de la nature."

Depardieu thinks a sense of humor is the best defense against aging.

Physical Characteristics: As a child, Gerard stuttered, but eventually, from this speech, he got rid of the defect.

Interests

• winery, culinary

• Politicians

  Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro

• Writers

  Saint-Augustine’s Confessions, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, William Shakespeare, Guillaume Thomas François Raynal

• Artists

  Pablo Picasso, Jeff Koons, Michelangelo

• Sport & Clubs

  wrestling

• Music & Bands

  Chanson

Connections

In 1970, Depardieu married Élisabeth Guignot, with whom he had two children, actor Guillaume (1971-2008) and actress Julie. On 28 January 1992, while separated from Élisabeth, he had a daughter, Roxanne, with the model Karine Silla (sister of producer Virginie Besson-Silla). In 1996 he divorced Élisabeth and began a relationship with actress Carole Bouquet, who was his partner from 1997 to 2005. On 14 July 2006, he had a son, Jean, with French-Cambodian Helene Bizot.

Father:

René Depardieu

Mother:

Alice (Marillier) Depardieu

Spouse:

Elisabeth Guignot

Son:

Guillaume Depardieu

Son:

Julie Depardieu

Daughter:

Roxanne Depardieu

Son:

Jean Depardieu

Partner:

Carole Bouquet

Friend:

John Travolta

A friend of John Travolta, he was asked by Travolta to be his French voice in the dubbed version of Brian De Palma's movie Blow Out (1981).

Friend:

Robert De Niro

Depardieu has been good friends with Robert De Niro for more than 30 years since the two worked together in Bernardo Bertolucci's Novecento (1976) in 1974-1975.

Friend:

Fidel Castro Ruz

Depardieu is a favorite actor and close friend of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Friend:

Vladimir Putin

References

• Depardieu: A Biography
  1994