Gérard Depardieu

Biography: life and films

At the time of writing (August 2019), Gérard Depardieu's film and television credits number over 230, a remarkable tally for any actor and one that is virtually unrivalled for such a high profile and successful performer. Within a few years of his first big break in the mid-1970s, still in his twenties, Depardieu became the most popular, the most famous and most highly remunerated French actor of his time. In the 1980s, when France came perilously close to losing its film industry altogether, he was one of the two big hitters (the other being Catherine Deneuve) who helped French cinema through a rocky patch by raising its international profile. For two whole decades, Gérard Depardieu was the charismatic Gallic superstar that French film aficionados around the world would flock to see in their millions, whilst at home he was a living legend, energising both the commercial and auteur sectors of French cinema whilst somehow finding the time to indulge in his other two passions, gastronomy and winegrowing.

Gérard Depardieu is a man of the wildest contradictions. His irresistible animal magnetism and bear-like physique suggest a ladykiller of dangerously unpredictable power, but there is also an intensely engaging gentleness to his persona that suggests nobility, innocence and tenderness, a smooth feminine interior that seems to be constantly at variance with his crudely shaped masculine outer frame. Which other actor could take on roles as diverse as Danton, Cyrano de Bergerac and Obélix, and in each case achieve an astonishing success? The French are proud of their monstres sacrés, and in Depardieu they have a man worthy of this epithet - a flawed genius with a blazing talent and passion for screen acting that is practically unsurpassed.

Gérard Depardieu was born on 27th December 1948. The third of five children, he was the son of an illiterate metal sheet worker René Depardieu (referred to as D.D., the name Depardieu would later give to his film production company) and was raised in virtual poverty, in Châteauroux, a backwater rural town in central France. Neglected by his frequently drunken father, the young Gérard had a turbulent childhood and adolescence, frequently getting into trouble with the law through his delinquent behaviour. As a child, he took odd jobs at an American airbase near to where he lived, thereby obtaining alcohol and tobacco which he traded for profit. He left school at 13, barely able to read, and had his first job as an apprentice in a local printers' shop. At school, his main passion was poetry and literature, and he performed in school plays. He was also a keen footballer and boxer, and it was whilst boxing with American servicemen at the age of 14 that he acquired his broken nose.

In 1964, encouraged by a drama student named Michel Pilorgé, Depardieu went to Paris and was suddenly drawn into the acting profession. In later years, Depardieu would remark: 'Acting saved me, otherwise I would have become a killer.' He attended drama lectures at the TNP (Théâtre National Populaire) and was coached by Jean-Laurent Cochet, who was impressed by his obvious passion for the theatre. The aspiring drama student soon became a star pupil at the TNP and quickly gained the confidence to take on principal roles. In the course of his studies, he met Élisabeth Guignot, another aspiring actor, with whom he formed a close friendship. Although she was seven years his senior and came from a more privileged background, they pursued an intense love affair and married in 1970. Their two children, Guillaume and Julie, would both become high-profile actors.

In 1967, Depardieu first appeared on film in Roger Leenhardt's short Le Beatnik et le minet (1967), playing a version of himself. Over the next four years, he would feature in nine stage plays, including a French version of Terence Frisby's There's a Girl in My Soup. One of the plays directed by Claude Régy was seen by the writer-filmmaker Marguerite Duras, who give him a role in her 1972 film Nathalie Granger. Duras was so impressed by Depardieu's promise and authenticity that she used him again in three subsequent films: La Femme du Gange (1973), Baxter, Vera Baxter (1976) and Le Camion (1977).

Gérard Depardieu's first brush with commercial cinema was in Michel Audiard's comedy Le Cri du cormoran le soir au-dessus des jonques (1970), in which he had a small part alongside Jean Carmet, who would become his friend and mentor for many years. Over the next few years, Depardieu was exclusively cast in minor roles that fitted his beatnik, petit voyou persona, until Bertrand Blier gave him his big break, casting him alongside another rising star, Patrick Dewaere, in his iconoclastic road movie Les Valseuses (Going Places) (1974). This film was a massive hit in France, attracting an audience of just under six million, and Depardieu became an overnight star as a result. That same year, he was awarded the prestigious Gérard-Philipe Prize for acting.

The Blier-Depardieu partnership would prove to be an immensely profitable one and the two men would work together on eight further features, from the Oscar winning rom-com Préparez vos mouchoirs (1977) to the surreal oddity Convoi exceptionnel (2019). Buffet froid (1979), Tenue de soirée (1986), Trop belle pour toi (1989) and Merci la vie (1991) are among the career highlights of both the director and his lead actor.

Thanks to Claude Sautet and Jacques Rouffio, Depardieu was able to leave his petit voyou screen persona behind him, widening his repertoire drastically in their films: Vincent, François, Paul... et les autres (1974) and Sept morts sur ordonnance (1975), the latter of which earned him his first César nomination. For the remainder of the decade, he took the lead in a succession of highly provocative films that took full advantage of his mercurial persona, combining tenderness and brutality, and unconventional raw sex appeal.

In Barbet Schroeder's Maîtresse (1976), he is seen pursuing a torrid love affair with a professional dominatrix (Bulle Ogier) with a penchant for sadomasochism. In Serge Gainsbourg's Je t'aime moi non plus (1976), he briefly crops up as a gay man, and in Marco Ferreri's La Dernière femme, a daring study in male virility, he famously castrates himself with an electric carving knife. His international standing was assured in 1976 when Bernardo Bertolucci gave him a prominent part alongside Robert De Niro in his lavish two-part period drama 1900.

In 1980, Depardieu began his long, fruitful but incredibly turbulent association with auteur filmmaker Maurice Pialat, playing opposite Isabelle Huppert in Loulou, a film that French audiences found shocking on account of its protracted nude scenes. This was followed by Police (1985), a realist crime drama that won Depardieu the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival in 1985, and bleak spiritual drama Sous le soleil de Satan, which controversially took the Palme d'or at Cannes in 1987. The duo's final collaboration was the director's unfinished swansong Le Garçu (1995).

1980 marked another first for Depardieu, his breakthrough into mainstream comedy, via Claude Zidi's popular Inspecteur la Bavure, in which he played a hardened gangster opposite comic icon Coluche. That same year, he also began his singing career, recording an album of songs entitled J'ai tant révé. Alain Resnais gave him one of his least typical roles in Mon oncle d'Amérique (1980), and on Le Dernier métro, an Occupation-era romance, he fulfilled his ambition to work with both New Wave legend François Truffaut and French screen icon Catherine Deneuve. This latter film wasn't only a box office hit, it met with universal critical acclaim and received ten Césars, including Depardieu's first Best Actor César. The following year, Truffaut later cast Depardieu alongside his real-life partner Fanny Ardant in La Femme d'à côté (1981), although plans for subsequent collaborations were scuppered by the director's untimely death in 1984.

In 1981, Depardieu scored a notable box office hit when partnered with popular comic performer Pierre Richard in Francis Veber's buddy movie La Chèvre. The duo repeated this success in Veber's subsequent comedies: Les Compères (1983) and Les Fugitifs (1986). Depardieu's ambition to direct his own film was fulfilled in 1984 when he made a screen adaptation of a stage production of Molière's Tartuffe in which he had recently triumphed.

In the 1980s, the actor's international profile grew as a result of his leading role in three big budget period pieces: Daniel Vigne's Le Retour de Martin Guerre (1982), Andrzej Wajda's Danton (1982) and Claude Berri's Jean de Florette (1986). Isabelle Adjani then persuaded him to play the lead opposite her (as the sculptor Auguste Rodin) in Bruno Nuytten's Camille Claudel (1988), a pet project she had nursed for many years. In 1989, he was granted a Fellowship by the British Film Institute for his film work.

Then came the role in which Depardieu is widely considered to have given his finest performance, as the poet-swordman Cyrano in Jean-Paul Rappeneau's lavish historical drama Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), adapted from the celebrated play by Edmond Rostand. A world wide hit, the film won its lead actor his greatest accolade, the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. The success of Cyrano inevitably led to invitations to work in Hollywood. Depardieu's first English language leading role was in Peter Weir's Green Card (1990), a rom-com with Andie MacDowell which won him a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy. This was followed by Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) and Randall Wallace's The Man in the Iron Mask (1998).

A promising career in Hollywood at the start of the 1990s was suddenly derailed when the American magazine Time published an article with an interview he had given two decades previously in which it was claimed he took part in a rape at the age of nine. Depardieu fiercely denied this and insists the interviewer mistranslated the word 'assister', thus turning him from a casual bystander to an active participant in a sexual assault he had witnessed. The incident not only cost the actor an Oscar win for his performance as Cyrano de Bergerac, it also put him off working in the United States for some time.

Back in France, Depardieu's career continued to blossom, and in 1991 he was headlining another well-regarded period piece, Tous les matins du monde, as an older version of the same character played by his son Guillaume, the baroque composer Marin Marais. Ten years on, Depardieu père and fils would later work together on Jacob Berger's Aime ton père (2001), a cogent study in filial alienation that bore more than a passing similarity to Guillaume Depardieu's troubled relationship with his father. Guillaume enjoyed considerable success as a serious film actor, despite a fraught personal life that was cruelly cut short by his premature death in 2008.

Tous les matins du monde was directed by Alain Corneau, who also put the actor's talents to good use in the hard-edged thriller Le Choix des armes (1981) and sumptuous romance Fort Saganne (1984). On both of these films, Depardieu once again shared the limelight with Catherine Deneuve. To date, these two performers have appeared in ten films together, most recently Florence Quentin's La Bonne promme (2017). Other notable collaborations include: François Dupeyron's Drôle d'endroit pour une rencontre (1988), André Téchiné's Les Temps qui changent (2004) and François Ozon's Potiche (2010).

In the 1990s and 2000s, Depardieu showed up in a number of big budget period dramas, on both the big and small screens. For the cinema, he featured in Yves Angelo's Le Colonel Chabert (1994), Roland Joffé's Vatel (2000), Steve Boyum's La Femme mousquetaire (2002) and Safy Nebbou's L'Autre Dumas (2010). On television, he contributed to several prestigious TV movies, incuding Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1998), Balzac (1999) and Les Misérables (2000). In 1993, his longstanding wish to work with the New Wave auteur Jean-Luc Godard was granted, but the making of Hélas pour moi (1993) proved not to be an agreeable experience for either man.

Although he has been sensitive about his girth for many years, Depardieu was able to put this to good use (with some additional padding) in the role that has become one his favourites, the menhir-heaving Gaul giant Obélix. His first outing in the role came in 1999, in Claude Zidi's hit comedy Astérix et Obélix contre César, with Christian Clavier equally at home in the role of the comic book icon Astérix. Since, Depardieu has reprised the part three times, in: Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre (2002), Astérix aux Jeux olympiques (2008) and Astérix et Obélix: Au service de Sa Majesté (2012). Meanwhile, the actor's comedic talents were always in demand for more up-to-date settings, including Francis Veber's Le Placard (2000) and Tais-toi! (2003).

The 2000s saw Depardieu, now in his sixth decade, embracing an increasing diversity of roles that revealed an actor of remarkable subtlety and understanding of the human condition in a multitude of contexts. In 2004, he was widely acclaimed for his dedicated portrayal of a disillusioned cop in Olivier Marchal's 36 quai des Orfèvres, and further praise came his way when he was cast as a fading nightclub singer in Xavier Giannoli's Quand j'étais chanteur (2006). Claude Chabrol called upon his aptitude for ambiguous character portrayals in his final film Bellamy (2009) and, in La Tête en friche (2010), Jean Becker gave him one of his most sympathetic roles, as a late middle-aged man with learning difficulties suddenly discovering the beauty of literature.

At the start of the 2010s, Depardieu came under fire in the French press on account of his tax avoidance initiatives and cosy relations with dodgy East European leaders. A sycophantic letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin allowed him to gain Russian citizenship, one of a series of high-profile episodes that served to diminish his reputation and popularity around the world. The Depardieu brand was no longer the dependable money-spinner it had once been, so the actor became ever more shunned by the mainstream.

Now an incredibly wealthy man, his personal prosperity assured by a host of business interests outside the fickle world of cinema (including his real passion in life: viticulture), the actor now had the luxury of devoting himself to acting work that gave him the most satisfaction. By working with a new generation of independent filmmakers and established auteurs who were as keen to allow him to develop in his art as he was, Depardieu experienced something of a personal renaissance, fully embracing the freedom that relentless hard work and good fortune over many decades had given him.

Director Guillaume Nicloux gave Depardieu a new lease of life in his idiosyncratic takes on familiar genres, Valley of Love (2015) and The End (2016), and for his old friend Fanny Ardant he was ideally suited for the role of Joseph Stalin in Le Divan de Staline. Other notable films include Rachid Djaïdani's Tour de France (2016), Bertrand Blier's Convoi exceptionnel (2019) and Pierre-François Martin-Laval's Fahim (2019). 2020 looks like being a vintage year for the actor, with appearances in films by such noted directors as Jean-Pierre Mocky, Lucas Belvaux and Xavier Giannoli. His most anticipated role is as Commissaire Jules Maigret in Patrice Leconte's Maigret et la jeune morte (2020). With a mountain of work behind him and a seemingly endless open road in front, you can't help feeling that Gérard Depardieu's screen career is only just beginning.

Filmography

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