Gérard Depardieu made his debut in front of the cameras in 1965, and has never left the big screen since. But who really knows him? Not Jean Reno, anyway. The two actors were born the same year, in 1948. They lived through the same era, met more or less the same directors, rubbed shoulders with the same artistic circles. But they are not intimate. Surely not.
In an interview given to Paris Matchthe actor of Leon had given his opinion on the actors splashed by the movement Metoo. He felt that, if it was not his responsibility or his “type” to “comment” or “condemn”, certain actors had “a little abused their fame”.
Jean Reno is not one of Gérard Depardieu’s close friends
It’s difficult not to think of Gérard Depardieu and the numerous testimonies of makeup artists, dressers, and other little hands on film sets when it comes to sexist and sexual violence denounced in French cinema. These testimonies of abused women had received a wave of support, but the actor of Waltzes was also able to count on the defense of a few close to the middle.
A column was notably published on December 25, 2023 in Le Figaro to defend him. If certain stars like Charles Berling, Nadine Trintignant or Yvan Attal later regretted having signed it, others, like Carole Bouquet, stuck to their positions and defended it body and soul, even on TV sets, like that of Yann Barthès in Daily. Jean Reno was not one of them for a specific reason.
“Few people really know him”
The 75-year-old Franco-Spanish actor first explained to Paris Match that he had not been asked to sign this column. But if that had been the case, he assures us that he would not have done it anyway.
About his bond with the actor, he said that despite their shared generational origins, they were not close. “ I like him as an actor, of course. But who knows Gérard ? », he said, before assuming: “Maybe Carole Bouquet, because she lived with him. » But according to Jean Reno, “few people really know Gérard”.
