Gerard Depardieu

COMING SOON!

The French actor is a hit with the ladies although he thinks he's ugly. Brilliant performances in films like Jean De Florette and Cyrano De Bergerac have made him a screen god.

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Gerard Depardieu
born: 27-12-1948
birth place: Chateauroux, France

What he lacks in typical leading-man good looks, French actor, producer, director and bon viveur Depardieu more than makes up for in charisma and seemingly boundless reserves of energy, having notched up more than 150 films to date in a career that has won him both critical acclaim and an international fanbase.

Depardieu’s impoverished beginnings may have been a contributing factor to his later success. Born the third of six children in Chateauroux, 106 miles south of Paris, to a disillusioned mother and a father who was an illiterate sheet metal worker and alcoholic, Depardieu dropped out of school and ran away from home at the age of 12.

Hitchhiking around Europe, he earned money as a door-to-door soap salesman and as a beach boy in the South of France, as well as getting involved in car theft and the black market.

After several brushes with the law and a brief spell in prison, things took a turn for the better when a friend encouraged the young Gerard to audition for the Theatre Nationale Populaire in Paris. Once he had overcome a stammer, Depardieu excelled, training alongside future co-stars Patrick Dewaere and Miou-Miou. In 1965 he made his film debut in the ‘Le Beatnik et le minet’, after which he quickly became a familiar face on French TV.

By the early 70s, Depardieu had co-starred in 11 French films, but his big break was to come in 1974, when he was given the part of an incompetent thug in director Bertrand Blier’s Les Valseuses’/‘Going Places’. After this success, he went on to star alongside popular French actress Isabelle Adjani in ‘Barocco’, followed by the role of a passionate Communist agitator in ‘1900’, before teaming up with Blier once again in the Oscar-winning ‘Preparez vos mouchoirs’/‘Get Out Your Handkerchiefs’.

Starting the 80s with a bang, Depardieu won France’s prestigious César award for his portrayal of a resistance fighter in ‘Le Dernier métro’/‘The Last Metro’. More rave reviews followed when he played the part of a 16-century peasant whose identity is in question in ‘Le Retour de Martin Guerre’/‘The Return of Martin Guerre’ in 1982. The same year saw him shine in the title role of ‘Danton’, set in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Depardieu made the switch from actor to co-director in 1984, with ‘Le Tartuffe’. A stellar performance as a tough cop in ‘Police’ came next, snaring him the Best Male Performance award at the 1985 Venice Film Festival, before he landed the career-changing role of a naïve farmer in the classic ‘Jean de Florette’. Suddenly, the name Gerard Depardieu was recognised around the world.

The actor sealed the approval of fans and critics alike in the title role of ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’, a box-office smash in 1990, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar nomination. The film, which scooped nine Césars, including Depardieu’s Best Actor, and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, also earned him the 1990 Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Male Performance.

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