December 18, 2008. Copyright 2008, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Troubled French film star Gerard Depardieu turns 60 in mourning for his son
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, December 18, Graphic News:  With his roguish personality and rugged good looks, Gerard Depardieu has been France's best-known and most successful actor for the last three decades. But as he approaches his 60th birthday, the hero of epic tales such as Jean de Florette and Cyrano de Bergerac is dealing with personal tragedy following the sudden death in October of his eldest child, 37-year-old Guillaume. Father and son had endured a difficult relationship. In his autobiography, published in 2004, Guillaume wrote of his complex emotions towards Gerard, saying that he both loved and detested him. Although the book did nothing, initially, to heal their rift, it is understood the two had grown closer recently. Guillaume, who followed his father into an acting career, had been filming in Romania when he was taken ill. He died from pneumonia at a hospital in Paris. At his funeral service, his father read an extract from Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, before flying to Italy for the annual Rome Film Festival. 
 
The third of five children, Gerard grew up in Chateauroux, in central France, where his father was a metal worker and firefighter. He left school at the age of 13 and went to train as a printer, but broke into acting when he joined a travelling theatre. He began to appear in films in the mid-1960s and in 1974 found popular success with Les Valseuses, directed by Bertrand Blier. He was awarded a Cesar -- the French equivalent of an Oscar -- for his performance in Le Dernier Metro (1980). 
 
When Marcel Pagnol's novel Jean de Florette was made into a film in 1987, Depardieu was widely acclaimed for his portrayal of the hunchback Cadoret, who is swindled by his neighbours, with tragic consequences. Playing his screen wife, Aimee, was Depardieu's real wife, Elisabeth, whom he had married in 1971. The sequel, Manon des Sources, took the story on to the next generation and the two films proved particularly popular with British audiences. It has even been suggested that they were responsible for a mini exodus of Brits to Provence -- the setting for the stories -- and for boosting tourism to the region to this day.
 
Despite their on-screen success, Gerard and Elisabeth's marriage ended in divorce after 25 years, in 1996. As well as Guillaume, the couple had a daughter, Julie, who is also an actress. Gerard has another daughter, Roxanne, born in 1992 to his then-girlfriend, Karine and a young son, Jean, from a relationship with a Franco-Cambodian woman. An accomplished winemaker, Gerard owns vineyards in France, Italy and North Africa and is on record as commenting that he would rather spend time with grape growers than actors. The star of the Oscar-nominated Green Card (1990), in which he played the fake husband of Andie MacDowell attempting to enter the U.S., has, on several occasions, announced his retirement from the film world. Gerard's career was almost ended by a massive heart attack in 2000, after which he had multiple bypass surgery. Passionate about motorbikes, he had a serious accident while filming Asterix et Obelix in Paris in 1999. Gerard is currently living with the novelist Clementine Igou.
/ENDS