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Depardieu, a hermit, in love with the desert? One has a hard time imagining it, so much is his character generous, abounding, overflowing of life. "But it is not the opposite!" he protests. "On the contrary, the desert is full of life!" One understands better: life, the world, a new world to discover... So Depardieu embodied Christopher Columbus. It is not by chance: "I am fascinated by this date of 1492 where the world turned from the Orient toward the west, toward new unknown worlds...
Our time, our borders, were never sufficient for his voracity. First attracted, as a teenager, by science-fiction and the fantastic, Gérard Depardieu fishes henceforth in the immense historic or literary hero fishpond to feed his passion for discovery. And to heal the precocious injury for revenge, when, obligated to work for a living, he observed with longing the high school students with their satchels.
"If I am also fascinated by history, it is maybe because I was deprived of education when I was young," explained the actor. "I like to immerse myself in other times, to learn how people lived long ago. To know that, for example, in the Middle Ages, they lived in small, dark huts. That they were afraid of the stranger, of the vagabond..." That he learned during the filming of The Return of Martin Guerre. Gérard Depardieu had conversed then for a long time with historian Georges Duby. Since then nothing seems to pacify his bulimia to know, to embody the Dantons, Hypocrite, Rodin, Cyrano, Balzac, Vidocq, Vatel and Jean Valjean that haunt our imaginations. As if he had given himself a mission, known to himself alone, to exhaust his stupendous energy on our French heritage. . .
This bulimia of roles - which doubles itself with the overflowing of a business man's activities, in the company of his friend Gérard Bourgoin, new boss of the French soccer -- does it give him the time to live? "Of course!" protests Depardieu. "By now, I have quite a lot of hours of experience. I don't have a lot of work therefore to prepare for a role: I'm immediately on one hundred percent. That gives me the time to do other things. I produce, I have people writing for me, I read, I make my wine, I take time for my friends. . ."
And for love? "I like life, I like people... I also like women, is it true. " With his ogreish side, do they fear him? Or is not rather he, at the heart, who is impressed by them. . .
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