Sunday 12 October 2014

The sad case of Depardieu as the French turn against him

From the clear-eyed vantage point of a 14-bottles-a-day wine habit, Gérard Depardieu peers through a fog of Gauloises fumes and sees France in bad shape. He got no thanks for his assessment, and has fallen out with President François Hollande. We should be glad Depardieu didn’t fall on the president, for last week brought pictures of the actor in comically bloated shape.
Particularly distressing to Depardieu, 65, is the way his countrymen seem to have turned against him since he announced he was moving to Belgium and taking Russian citizenship. In an interview last week, he said: “I pity the French. They have lost their happiness. They don’t believe in anything any more. I’m a free man.

Depardieu’s sensitivity about money arises from a childhood where there wasn’t any, and long before he fell foul of Hollande’s wealth tax, he was complaining that even with a prodigious output of around two films a year, he was hardly breaking even.
Not that he looks like a starvation case. Last week’s roly-poly appearance on a film set in California drew inevitable comparisons with his screen role as Obélix, but not even the monstrous cartoon Gaul can match Depardieu’s appetite. Lunch with Gégé is like sharing a table with a builder’s skip. Down will go entire chickens, saucissons, baguettes, heaps of pasta and bowls of olives. The cheeseboard will be ransacked, refilled and ransacked again, the desert trolley summoned for a similar plundering, and at this point the actor’s thirst is still picking up speed.
So Says  William Langley in the Telegraph, there are articles about Depardieu in every paper, all with quotes about his eating and drinking habits as his book about his life is promoted.
  Val says  drinking to these excesses is an illness and we are told it has often to do with low self esteem. Is Depardieu too far gone to seek help, sadly I think he probably is. Depardieu is on a collision course with death. I always feel that that people who love him should make him stop, but we know from other high profile drunks making someone give up and seek treatment is not easy if not impossible. I am thinking of George Best amongst others.
Malc says aren't we all on a collision course with death?
Val says Yes but some of us go over the speed limit to get there.
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