Depardieu, Gérard

(1948- )

   Actor and director. Gérard Depardieu is France's — and perhaps Europe's—most internationally recognized actor of the 1970s and beyond. Depardieu dropped out of school at an early age and started in the theater in the 1960s, then moved to a film acting career with Roger Leenhardt's short Le beatnik et le minet (1965). In 1971, he acted in Michel Audiard's Le Cri du cormoran le soir au-dessus des jonques and Jacques Deray's Un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide. He worked in Marguerite Duras's Nathalie Granger (1973) and Le Camion (1977) and rose to stardom with Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses (1973). He acted again for Blier in Préparez vos mouchoirs (1978), Buffet Froid (1979), Tenue de soirée (1986), Trop belle pour toi (1989),Merci la vie (1991), and Les Acteurs (2000).

   Depardieu has starred in international blockbusters such as Claude Berri's Jean de Florette (1986) and is likewise recognized for his work with auteur directors such as Alain Resnais in L 'an 01 (1973), Mon Oncle d'Amérique (1980), and I Want to Go Home (1989) and François Truffaut in La femme d'à côté (1981) and Le Dernier Métro (1980), for which he was awarded a César for Best Actor. His performance in Maurice Pialat's Police (1985) won him a Best Actor Award at Venice. Pialat also chose him for leading roles in Loulou (1980), Sous le soleil de Satan (1987), and Le garçu (1995).

   Depardieu is adept in multiple genres. Several of his successful comic roles were in films by Francis Veber: La Chèvre (1981), Les Compères (1983), Les Fugitifs (1986), and Le Placard (2000). He also played Obélix in Claude Zidi's Astérix et Obélix contre César (1999), animating one of the most beloved of France's comic-book heroes.

   Depardieu has done a number of what could be considered heritage films, including Daniel Vigne's Le retour de Martin Guerre (1982), Alain Corneau's Fort Saganne (1984) and Tous les matins du monde (1991), Depardieu's own Le Tartuffe (1984), Bruno Nyutten's Camille Claudel (1988), Berri's Uranus (1990) and Germinal (1993), Yves Angelo's Le Colonel Chabert (1994), and Josée Dayan's television series Balzac (1999). One of his most acclaimed heritage roles was in Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), for which he won Best Actor at both the César Awards and Cannes. Another acclaimed heritage performance was in Andrzej Wajda's Danton (1982), for which he won the National Society of Film Critics Award and the Best Actor Award at the Montreal World Film Festival.

   Depardieu appeared in other notable French films, including André Téchiné's Barocco (1976) and Les temps qui changent (2004), Claude Miller's Dites-lui que je l'aime (1977), Jean-Marie Poiré's Les anges gardiens (1995), Jean Becker's Élisa (1995), and Anne Fontaine's Nathalie (2004). He has also acted in several Anglophone features, including Peter Weir's Green Card(1990), for which he received an Oscar nomination, Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Randall Wallace's The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), Roland Joffé's Vatel (2000), Matt Dillon's City of Ghosts (2002), Wayne Wang's Last Holiday (2006), and Sam Weisman's Knights of Manhattan (2006).

   Other international films in which Depardieu has appeared include Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976), Luigi Comencini's L'Ingorgo: una storia impossibile (1979), Guiseppi Tornatore's A Pure Formality (1994), and Brad Mirman's Wanted (2003). Depardieu directed Un pont entre deux rives (1999) with Frédéric Auburtin. An actor who has excelled at embodying an impressive range of characters — literary heroes, historical legends, canonical writers, macho criminals, romantic sensitive leads, and closet homosexuals, among many others—Depardieu was awarded a Career Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1997.