Gérard Dépardieu: The Ugly Frog That Became a Prince
The battered and beautiful and bashful Frenchman who claims he's not really an actor... more of a winemaker!
"Success... success is for the man who is currently in vogue. But success – what is it? I'm suspicious of success because it becomes unfashionable so quickly. I believe in talent... But success. I'm a bit of a peasant about it - there are good harvests and bad harvests, I think."
Depardieu is notoriously shy about giving interviews, and yet here, he is unwaveringly honest. His honest philosophy runs deeper than a crop of awards and a fertile box office.
When he is not picking up prizes he is picking grapes from his vineyard in the Loire.
He talks of his passion for the land, for wine (on his passport he has 'winemaker' and then 'actor) and how he really – despite his success – doesn't see himself as an actor at all.
"I'm not an actor. If I had an actor's problems, I'd have been dead long ago... because I don't have the honesty of actor. I think I'm much more of a... producer, a distributor, a communicator if you like."
From his first to his most recent roles, Depardieu's lack of guile and pretension is amazing. Of Cyrano de Bergerac who he "secretly loved" he says, "I discovered someone who resembled me much more than I thought."
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