France came belatedly to celebrity culture, but is now making up for it with a vengeance. While the Dominique Strauss-Kahn politico-sexual scandal is still rumbling on in the French courts after being settled in America , another major fracas involving a different rotund male star in his early 60s has the country and the international media agog. A medal? He duly received a passport from Vladimir Putin on 5 January.
Who is next? The private lives of public personalities have become less and less taboo, from the coverage of the murder of actress Marie Trintignant by her partner, the singer Bertrand Cantat, in , and the July break-up between Adjani and Jean-Michel Jarre, to the recent instances of the Strauss-Kahn saga and topless pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge.
Depardieu has been fair game for the presse people. His heavy drinking, eating binges, slimming diets, motorbike accidents, liaisons and problems with his extended family have all been featured, especially his relationship with his estranged actor son Guillaume, whose troubled life included delinquency, drugs, jail, accidents, injury and a tragic early death in at the age of Even the ultra-secretive Deneuve could do nothing to stop the revelation, in , that she, like Depardieu, had received and failed to pay tax on large amounts of cash from the controversial Algerian businessman Rafik Khalifa to appear at a promotional event.
One key aspect of this new cultural economy is that stars can now finance their celebrity though advertising and product sponsorships. In some instances they derive more income from that kind of activity than their films. Press reports, photos at events such as marriages, presence at cocktail parties and so on: their showing up can be paid for in cash, jewellery, handbags, mobile phones and now, it seems, also foreign passports. The celebrity world is, of course, also global.
Since the s, Depardieu has been busy consolidating his assets through a dizzying spectrum of activities: a stab at film directing Un pont entre deux rives , , some producing and acting on stage and in a staggering number of films in 38 years — an average of more than five a year. He has meanwhile willingly played the celebrity game, giving interviews, appearing on television chat shows, singing with Gulnara Karimova , the daughter of Uzbekistani president Islam Karimov, and promoting his wine in hypermarket catalogues.
