Gérard Depardieu

His father and mother were both born in 1923 and both died in 1988.

Gérard Depardieu grew up in poverty in a two-room apartment at 39 rue du Maréchal-Joffre, Châteauroux, in a proletarian family with five brothers and sisters.

Gérard helped his mother in the deliveries of his younger brothers and sisters.

He spent more time on the streets than in school, leaving at the age of 13.

Practically illiterate and half stammering, he learned to read only later.

He worked at a printworks, while participating in boxing matches.

He also became involved in selling stolen goods, and was put on probation.

During a difficult adolescence, he "got by" through committing theft and smuggling all kinds of goods (cigarettes, alcohol), among others with the GIs of the large American air base of Châteauroux-Déols.

He also acted as a bodyguard for prostitutes who came down from Paris on weekends, the GIs' payday.

His family nicknamed him "Pétard" or "Pétarou", because of the habit he had acquired of farting incessantly, in all places.

Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu (,, ; born 27 December 1948) is a French actor, known to be one of the most prolific in film history.

Gérard Depardieu was born on 27 December 1948 in Châteauroux, Indre, France.

He is one of the five children of Anne Jeanne Josèphe (née Marillier), a stay-at-home mother known as "La Lilette", and René Maxime Lionel Depardieu (better known in his neighborhood as "Dédé" because he could write only two letters), a metal worker and volunteer fireman.

He has completed over 250 films since 1967, almost exclusively as a lead.

Depardieu has worked with over 150 film directors whose most notable collaborations include Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Maurice Pialat, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Ridley Scott and Bernardo Bertolucci.

He is the second highest-grossing actor in the history of French cinema behind Louis de Funès.

As of January 2022, his body of work also includes countless television productions, 18 stage plays, 16 records and 9 books.

He is mostly known as a character actor and for having portrayed numerous leading historical and fictitious figures of the Western world including Georges Danton, Joseph Stalin, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Auguste Rodin, Cyrano de Bergerac, Jean Valjean, Edmond Dantès, Christopher Columbus, Obélix, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Depardieu is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur and Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite.

In 1968, Depardieu's childhood best friend Jacky Merveille, also a kingpin from Châteauroux, died in a car accident, prompting him to take decisive control over his future.

At the age of sixteen, Depardieu left Châteauroux for Paris.

There, he began acting in the new comedy theatre Café de la Gare, along with Patrick Dewaere, Romain Bouteille, Sotha, Coluche, and Miou-Miou.

He studied theater under Jean-Laurent Cochet.

Regardless of his lack of culture, he heavily studied the classics and followed a therapy to correct his disastrous diction and memory.

Moreover, through his first wife, Élisabeth Guignot, he discovered the Parisian bourgeoisie.

Thus, he met Agnès Varda and her husband Jacques Demy.

In 1970, Depardieu married Élisabeth Guignot, with whom he had two children, actor Guillaume (1971–2008) and actress Julie (b. 1973).

His first film role to gain attention was playing Jean-Claude in Bertrand Blier's comedy Les Valseuses (Going Places, 1974).

Other prominent early films include Barbet Schroeder's controversial Maîtresse (1975), a starring role in Bernardo Bertolucci's historical epic 1900 (1976), with Robert De Niro, and a role in François Truffaut's The Last Metro (1980), with Catherine Deneuve for which he won his first César Award for Best Actor.

Depardieu and Deneuve have made nine more films together since then.

Depardieu has received acclaim for his performances in The Last Metro (1980), for which he won the César Award for Best Actor, in Police (1985), for which he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, Jean de Florette (1986), and Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), for which he won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival and his second César Award for Best Actor as well as garnering a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Depardieu's international profile rose as a result of his performance as a doomed, hunchbacked farmer in the film Jean de Florette (1986) and received notice for his starring role in Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), for which he won his second César Award for Best Actor, the Cannes Film Festival for Best Actor, and received a nomination for an Academy Award.

He co-starred in Peter Weir's comedy Green Card (1990), winning a Golden Globe Award, and later acted in many big-budget Hollywood films, including Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), Randall Wallace's The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), and Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012).

Depardieu has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault.

The French authorities have charged him with rape and, since 2021, have had him under formal investigation.

Depardieu has denied any wrongdoing and has not been convicted in connection with any of the accusations against him, but he was stripped of the National Order of Quebec in 2023.

Depardieu co-starred in Peter Weir's English language romantic comedy Green Card (1991), for which he won a Golden Globe Award.

He has since had other roles in other English language films, including Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), 102 Dalmatians (2000, Between Strangers (2002), and Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012). He played Obélix in the four live-action Astérix films in which he is said to have discovered Mélanie Laurent when she was fourteen. In 2009, he took part in a rare performance of Sardou's La Haine at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon, with Fanny Ardant; subsequently broadcast on France Musique. In 2013, he starred in an independent film titled A Farewell to Fools. Depardieu featured as a main character in Antwerp (Edinburgh Festival 2014), a play in The Europeans Trilogy (Bruges, Antwerp, Tervuren) by Paris-based UK playwright Nick Awde.

He was granted citizenship of Russia in January 2013 (officially adopted name in Жерар Ксавие Депардьё), and became a cultural ambassador of Montenegro during the same month.

In 2014, he starred in the controversial Welcome to New York in the thinly-disguised impersonation of disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.