Gérard Depardieu tells the court that he has taken a prosecutor of sexual attacks through hips to prevent them from slipping Gérard Depardieu

The French actor Gérard Depardieu Have admitted in the court that he caught the hips of a woman who accused him of sexual violence, but said it was to prevent her from slipping and not sexual attack.

“I grabbed her hips,” said the actor, 76, his trial for sexual violence to the Paris Criminal Court on Tuesday. The main judge noted that this was a change of his testimony during the interrogation of the police when he had denied that physical contact had taken place with the 54-year-old set decorator.

Depardieu is on trial for the alleged sexual attack of the set dresser and alleged sexual attacks by a 34-year-old assistant director while photographing the feature film Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in 2021.

He is confronted with a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of € 75,000 (£ 63,000) if convicted. He denies every misconduct and tells the court on Tuesday: “I deny it all.”

Depardieu – The largest French cinema star to be confronted with a test for sexual violence since the #Metoo movement – said: “I grabbed her hips not to slide because I was so upset by her, because of the heat. It was a Friday – it was the end of a movie shoot with a man who was very tired.”

In Cross Exercise by the public prosecutor, Depardieu later said: “I put the woman’s hips in my hands to talk to her.”

Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, the complainant lawyer, asked the actor if he had lied during the police investigation when he told officers that he had never touched the woman. Depardieu said: “I didn’t lie. I followed my advice [then] lawyer. Now I tell the truth. “

The court heard that the set of decorator, Amélie, had worked on styling film sets in a building in the 16th district of Paris on 10 September 2021.

She told the court that Depardieu, who was sitting on a chair in the corridor between Takes, started talking to her about the set and complained about the heat in the building. She said he told her: “It’s so hot, I can’t get an erection.” He also said: “I know how to get a woman to come without touching her.”

After he went to another room to film a scene, he returned to sit in the same corridor, she told the court. He asked Amélie why she was on the phone to her ‘guy’, she said. She told him that she was actually busy with the phone to detect parasols for the film. He said he said, “Come and touch my big parasol. I’ll put it in your pussy.”

Amélie claimed that he then grabbed her hips, pulled her to him and grabbed her with great strength between his thighs and her body grabbed, including her pubis, waist and chest. ‘He grabbed me by the hips, pulled me forward [towards him]Caught me with his legs, “she said.

“That is where I understood the power he had, he kept me very, very loudly. I remember his eyes, I saw this big face, red eyes, very angry, very agitated. And he said,” Come and touch my big parasol “, with a crazy look. I have never seen anything like that.

She said: “The fear that I felt – what stands out for me is not his sexual desire, but his cruelty. It was the fact that he knew I was scared – I saw his eyes light up with a kind of pleasure to scare someone. I remember that cruelty. He really scared me, and that amused him.”

Depardieu denied attack. He said he had been unhappy with Amélie’s work as a regular decorator, because a bedroom scene was not ready and badly done. He had commented that Amélie could not even run a BRIC-A-Brac store, let alone decorating a set, he said.

Depardieu said that he weighed 150 kg at the time and was so overweight that he could not have grabbed anyone among his thighs. He said to the panel of three jury members: “I would never place anyone between my legs. You can do a test if you want – with the PAUNCH I have, I can’t do it.”

He said he tends to make vulgar comments on the set, and told the court that he could often scream things like “Pussy! Pussy!”

When the main judge wondered that he would actually speak that on a film set, he said he could: “If it is hot, when I’m in a bad mood, things will always go on too long.”

Depardieu said: ‘I don’t see why I would go around with a woman, her buttocks, her breasts. I am not someone who rubs others against the Métro. I was told that exists, I know nothing about things like that, there are so many vices that I don’t know. “He said he would not put his hands on the back of a woman in any way.

However, he said that he used rough language on the set, but only to be “provocative” and to “relax” people. Asked by the main judge if he had said, “It’s so hot that I can’t get an erection,” Depardieu replied, “Maybe I said that, yes, why not?”

Depardieu said that the media had used the allegations against him to damage his reputation. He attacked the #MeToo movement and the women who had kept protest magazines outside of a concert tour that he gave at the time of the allegations. “This movement will be a fear,” he said.

Amélie said the court that there had been no conversation with Depardieu where he had criticized her work.

The process continues.