Gérard Depardieu

Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu was born on 27 December 1948 in Châteauroux, Indre, France. He is one of the five children of Anne Jeanne Josèphe (née Marillier), a stay-at-home mother known as "La Lilette", and René Maxime Lionel Depardieu (better known in his neighborhood as "Dédé" because he could write only two letters),: 12  a metal worker and volunteer fireman. His father and mother were both born in 1923 and both died in 1988. Depardieu grew up in poverty in a two-room apartment at 39 rue du Maréchal-Joffre, Châteauroux, in a working-class family, with five brothers and sisters.: 19  Depardieu helped his mother when she was in labour with his younger brothers and sisters. He spent more time on the streets than in school, leaving at the age of 13. Practically illiterate and half stammering, he learned to read only later. He worked at a printworks, and took part in boxing matches in his spare time. He also became involved in selling stolen goods, and was put on probation. During a difficult adolescence, he turned to theft and smuggling all kinds of goods, notably cigarettes and alcohol), to the GIs at the large American air base of Châteauroux-Déols. He also acted as a bodyguard for prostitutes who came down from Paris on weekends, the GIs' payday. His family nicknamed him "Pétard" or "Pétarou", because of the habit he had acquired of breaking wind incessantly.: 23  In 1968, Depardieu's childhood best friend Jacky Merveille, also a kingpin from Châteauroux, died in a car accident, prompting him to take decisive control over his future.: 37 At the age of sixteen, Depardieu left Châteauroux for Paris. There, he began acting in the new comedy theatre Café de la Gare, along with Patrick Dewaere, Romain Bouteille, Sotha, Coluche, and Miou-Miou. He studied theater under Jean-Laurent Cochet. Regardless of his lack of culture, he heavily studied the classics and followed a therapy to correct his disastrous diction and improve his memory. Moreover, through his first wife, Élisabeth Guignot, he discovered the Parisian bourgeoisie. Thus, he met Agnès Varda and her husband Jacques Demy. His first film role to gain attention was playing Jean-Claude in Bertrand Blier's comedy Les Valseuses (Going Places, 1974). Other prominent early films include Barbet Schroeder's controversial Maîtresse (1975), a starring role in Bernardo Bertolucci's historical epic 1900 (1976), with Robert De Niro, and a role in François Truffaut's The Last Metro (1980), with Catherine Deneuve for which he won his first César Award for Best Actor. Depardieu and Deneuve have since made nine more films together. Depardieu's international profile rose as a result of his performance as a doomed, hunchbacked farmer in the film Jean de Florette (1986) and received notice for his starring role in Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), for which he won his second César Award for Best Actor, the Cannes Film Festival for Best Actor, and received a nomination for an Academy Award. Depardieu co-starred in Peter Weir's English language romantic comedy Green Card (1991), for which he won a Golden Globe Award. He has since had other roles in other English language films, including Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), 102 Dalmatians (2000, Between Strangers (2002), and Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012). He played Obélix in the four live-action Astérix films in which he is said to have discovered Mélanie Laurent when she was fourteen. In 2009, he took part in a rare performance of Sardou's La Haine at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon, with Fanny Ardant; subsequently broadcast on France Musique. In 2013, he starred in an independent film titled A Farewell to Fools. Depardieu featured as a main character in Antwerp (Edinburgh Festival 2014), a play in The Europeans Trilogy (Bruges, Antwerp, Tervuren) by Paris-based UK playwright Nick Awde. In 2014, he starred in the controversial Welcome to New York in the thinly-disguised impersonation of disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.