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By Sylvie Corbet

PARIS (AP) — Renowned French actress Anouk Grinberg says the sexual assault trial against fellow actor Gérard Depardieu reflects slow awareness of sexual abuse in France, particularly in the film industry, after years of silence.

Grinberg, 61, who has appeared in around 30 films, spoke Monday at what was supposed to be the start of Depardieu’s trial but was postponed until March due to concerns over the health of the 75-year-old actor.

She has known Depardieu for more than three decades, appearing with him in a 1991 film and in the film “Les Volets Verts.” The trial revolves around the alleged sexual assault of two women, a production designer and an assistant director, on the set of the latter film in 2021.

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Depardieu has denied any wrongdoing.

In recent months, Grinberg has decided to speak out about the need for change, joining other French actors who have decided to shine a light on the ugly underbelly of the country’s industry.

“For several years, I witnessed this … without any reaction, like everyone else,” she told the Associated Press. “Because I was upset by the violence and also because at the time, we didn’t see it as violence.”

Yet with the #MeToo movement and the increase in women speaking out, something “has changed” in recent years, she said. “And I took the measure of this violence.”

Grinberg also said she personally knows actor Charlotte Arnould, who accuses Depardieu of two rapes allegedly committed in August 2018 in a separate case. Depardieu was charged in 2020 with rape and sexual assault in the case, but a magistrate has not yet decided whether he should stand trial.

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“What is complicated in cases of sexual violence is that most of the time, women do not move, do not defend themselves. And it’s not because they consent, it’s because they’re just petrified. Something died in them, paralyzed by terror, by disgust,” Grinberg said.

“This is where we need to educate society as well as the justice system,” she added.

Grinberg described in graphic detail Depardieu’s lewd comments that she said she continued to make on the set of “Green Shutters.”

“Society as a whole has really been a big accomplice to these actions, to these excesses, to these deviances,” Grinberg said. “I witnessed, on film sets, completely silent or sneering at this verbal violence.”

She said many in the film world kept silent because they feared they would no longer be able to work if they spoke out against powerful people in the industry.

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Depardieu’s trial shows that times have changed, especially since the alleged victims did not occupy important roles. The “little hands” who work in the cinema industry “are speaking out and saying: enough is enough. Enough really is enough,” Grinberg said.

Earlier this year, French actress Judith Godrèche called on the French film industry to “face the truth” about sexual violence and physical abuse at the César ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars. “We can decide that the men accused of rape no longer run (French) cinema,” Godrèche said.

Last year, one of France’s greatest actresses, Adèle Haenel, announced that she was leaving the French film industry which she denounced for “complacency towards sexual attackers”.

Haenel, star of the 2019 Cannes film “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” published an open letter in Télérama magazine in which she said Cannes and other pillars of the French film industry were “ready to do anything to defend their rapist leaders.” »

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