Gerard Depardieu: Male Prostitute, Thief In Younger Days, Autobiography Reveals

Once upon a time, Gerard Depardieu was a male prostitute, and the actor is now revealing some of the sordid details from his youth. Depardieu has had his troubled times over the years, but his new revelations provide some interesting context into the actor behind the headlines.

As the Daily Mail notes, the actor has put together an autobiography, and the Gerard Depardieu male prostitute admission is one of many shocking details revealed. Gerard details his challenging upbringing, one where his mother repeatedly told him she had tried to abort him using knitting needles. His family was quite poor, and he often wandered the streets alone when he was around 10-years-old.

Depardieu says that when he was 10, he easily passed for 15, and he realized that men found him attractive. He shares that when men approached him he would ask them for money, and it seems that approach worked for him for a while, in a sense.

The iconic character actor also sometimes helped a man rob graves, and when he was 16-years-old, he was briefly in prison for stealing a car. He continued his gig as a “rent boy,” as he terms it, and sometimes he would steal from his clients as well.

Interestingly, and sadly, Gerard’s son Guillaume followed a somewhat similar path for some time, it seems. Guillaume was also an actor, but he also worked as a male prostitute, and ended up in trouble for drugs and theft. He died at the age of 37 from viral pneumonia.

The Gerard Depardieu male prostitute and theft revelations come just a short time after the actor admitted that he can drink 14 bottles of alcohol a day. He says that it’s not that he’s an alcoholic, but that he’s hounded by his phobias.

Depardieu reveals that he’s “obsessed with the racket in my body,” and if he’s alone he drinks to drown out the noise. He adds that he can’t sleep unless he’s “dead drunk.” The actor touches on his decision to leave France and embrace Russia, and he says he’s been friendly with Vladimir Putin since 2008. Gerard says they have a lot in common, and he thinks that Putin likes his hooligan side.

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Depardieu’s autobiography is titled That’s the Way It Was, and it seems to be a very open look at the iconic actor’s challenging and fairly shocking life. Gerard Depardieu’s male prostitute stories, along with his other revelations, definitely give fans a different look into the life of the iconic actor.

[Image via Melty]