COVER STORY : Voyage of Celebrity : Not unlike Columbus, Gerard Depardieu seeks to boost his fortunes in the Americas. Will his star turn as the explorer in ‘1492’ do the trick?

The stage doors open and the crowd surges forward, pressing with a sudden burst of crazy fury against two black limousines parked directly outside.

A couple of security men emerge into the late afternoon sunlight, look startled at the fervor of the people straining forward, then stand aside from the entrance.

Next to appear is American actor Robert Duvall, who looks briefly stunned as flashbulbs pop and fans surge toward him. One can imagine his thoughts--he could walk down any Main Street back in the States without attracting a hundredth of this attention--as he ducks smartly into one of the limos.

But Duvall was just hors d’oeuvres, and the eager fans in the crowd, now pressing forward even more urgently, know it. They’re behaving like overeager kids at a pop concert, though these are sophisticated, affluent French adults in designer sportswear, collectively losing their customary cool.

Then Gerard Depardieu darts out of the doors, surveys the throng and offers a reflective wave as a look of real fear darts across his coarse features. Bodies lunge forward with no regard for safety, two people topple from their observation posts atop cars, and a chic 40ish woman in a gray cashmere dress stumbles and falls in the crush.

Now the flashbulbs pop more furiously amid a deafening clamor: Ici, Gerard! Gerard, regarde! Je t’ aime, Gerard! Sensibly, Depardieu does not stop to think--he dives straight into the back of a black Mercedes 600SE, which plows through the crowd. A few yards on, it is temporarily held up by the sheer volume of people, who now seem to engulf it. Finally, Depardieu’s driver makes his getaway, leaving onlookers smiling and shaking their heads as they stare down the street after it.

Depardieu and Duvall had just completed a press conference at the 18th annual Deauville Festival of American Film. To mark the festival, this pleasant, fashionable Normandy coastal town is festooned with the Stars and Stripes, while posters of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart seem to be featured in every store window.

The French, of course, revere American films and movie stars; that much has been evident since the emergence of New Wave directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut in the late 1950s. They also love Gerard Depardieu, who bestrides their film industry like a colossus, and has done so for 15 years now. But--and it is a big but --can Depardieu establish himself as a bankable movie star in America?

The answer will become clearer over the next few weeks, after the release of “1492: The Conquest of Paradise,” a $45-million epic directed by Ridley Scott, in which Depardieu plays Christopher Columbus. One of the year’s most heralded films, “1492” arrives on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to the Americas amid a continuing debate over whether the explorer should be lionized at all--or castigated as a brutal colonialist.

Already one hurdle to the success of “1492” has been removed; the other Columbus movie, the Salkinds’ “Christopher Columbus: The Discovery,” is effectively dead in the water only six weeks after its Aug. 21 release. So will American audiences embrace Gerard Depardieu--a man totally lacking conventional good looks or American-style star appeal, and one who speaks imperfect, sometimes unclear English? Can Depardieu conquer the Americas--or will he, like Columbus, be frustrated?

*

He comes through the high garden gate, scowling and shambling. Gerard Depardieu was obviously in the back of the church when they gave out natural grace and elegance; he proceeds awkwardly, as though moving through a substance far denser than air. He is top-heavy; a large head, dominated by an extraordinary bulbous nose, a bulky, barrel-chested upper body and long arms that dangle at his side. Today he wears a gray shirt beneath a black zip-up jacket, baggy, creased beige pants and black pointed cowboy boots. It is not a fetching ensemble; he looks as though he dressed in the dark.

It is the morning after the madness in Deauville, and we are a couple of miles away up in the hills beyond the town at the home of Depardieu’s press agent, Claude Davy. Depardieu, ruddy-faced, looked tired. But his mood mellowed as soon as he embarked upon one of his favorite pastimes--talking.

“I was very happy to play Columbus, to give some idea of the man,” he said. “Because who knows Columbus?” Given the extraordinary amount of discussion about Columbus in the last year, one might have expected Depardieu to be better informed. But he goes on in this vein: “Even historians know little about him. He was a Jew? We don’t know. Spanish? Italian? Nothing is known about him.” A few million Italian-Americans might disagree.

“So I am happy to accept the proposition that Columbus was a humanist, very modern and romantic. I’m also happy to work from the story that Ridley Scott and (screenwriter) Roselyne Bosch (derived) from letters that Columbus sent. From them, you can see the man. He’s a very mystical man, who had power but was also a man of adventure.”

*

Depardieu starts off his responses to questions in passably good English but frequently becomes excited by what he is saying and lapses into French. Knowing this about himself, he has thoughtfully arranged for a colleague, film producer and distributor Ann Francois, to translate.

One occasion when he certainly became excited was addressing the topic of whether Columbus was a hero or villain.

“Columbus changed many ideas because he proved the Earth was round,” Depardieu said. “After him came the Renaissance. He was very important for philosophers and artists. Until Columbus, many people insisted the Earth was flat--you sailed west, you fell into an abyss.”

So what does he make of the criticisms against Columbus?

“All this that the Americans say,” Depardieu shouted, starting to gesticulate, “I say non! When Einstein (did his work in physics), it was used to cure people, bring everything good, he never thought that Roosevelt. . . .”

Er--you mean Truman?

” . . . Yes, yes, Truman, that Truman would drop the atomic bomb! Never!” Even after calming down a little, he agreed that this was the defense of Columbus he would stand by to any denigrators.

He is far more sanguine about the implications of “1492” for his own career in America. Because he occupies such an unassailable position in the French film industry, it is tempting to speculate whether he even cares about making it in the United States.

“Yes, of course, I care,” Depardieu said. “It’s the nature of my work to care about such a big movie. I’m not solely responsible for this film, it’s a team, but it’s important for me that the American people go to see it. I would certainly be happy if the film gave me the opportunity to be accepted with the American audience and gave me different and new occasions to work.”

He grinned a little slyly. “If they can accept me with my French accent, and . . . “--here he ran his hands up and down the side of his body and made a dismissive exhaling noise--”pooof!”

What did he mean by that, “pooof”? Depardieu let out a loud, high-pitched whoop of a laugh and smiled a gummy grin, hugging his massive frame. “Oh, this body. I’m not obsessed by my weight. I like people to accept me the way I am. I try to keep healthy, you know, but. . . . “ A Gallic shrug and another disarming smile.

But what, then, would be the ideal for him--to work partly in France and partly in America? He got serious again. “The only difference is a question of economics,” he said. “I’ve noticed when you are in the English language and with an American distributor, your film goes all over the world. But if I make a French movie, with beautiful good ideas, they (Hollywood) do a remake.

“I believe in the movie, not the country of the movie. Ridley Scott, Adrian Lyne, they’re great directors, they stay in America, but they come from Europe.”

However, Depardieu accepts that “1492” represents a crossroads in confirming his mass popularity in the United States. He feels he has been edging closer toward this position with two roles: his virtuoso performance in the title role of “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1990), which won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for best foreign film, and in Peter Weir’s “Green Card” (1990), as a French composer with a grouchy, perverse personality not unlike his own who enters into an arranged marriage with a New York woman in order to stay in America.

“I think ‘Green Card’ helped me,” he said. “Much more than ‘Cyrano.’ ‘Cyrano’ was a French-language film, and, yes, it got seen all around the world. But then it had a story everyone knew.” He grimaced pointedly. “Except for a few Americans.”

Depardieu listened delightedly to a joke that circulated when “Cyrano” was released, about a Hollywood executive telling people he’d seen this terrific remake of Steve Martin’s “Roxanne.” “But this is true !” he shouted. “This happened! It is the same as when people read Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’! They think it is a remake of the musical!”

He points out that almost 40 of his 80-odd films have been made available in America--on video or on cable TV. “People have seen me in ‘Danton,’ in ‘The Return of Martin Guerre,’ in ‘Get Out Your Handkerchiefs.’ They’ve seen me in many facets. They know me now. They saw me in ‘Green Card’ with my French accent and accepted me as I am. Now I have to hope they accept me as Columbus, that they forget he was Spanish or Italian.”

*

Many of one’s preconceptions about Depardieu are confirmed on meeting him. The nonchalance about his appearance is the first; it’s not only his hastily selected wardrobe for the day, but also the fact that his lank hair flops repeatedly into his eyes. It’s hard to think of an American film actor of equal stature who would leave the house looking this way.

Then there is his temperament. His moods do indeed appear to swing swiftly and without notice. He may be pouting and grumpy one minute, then a thought will strike him as amusing and he grins joyously, gesticulating like crazy to persuade those around him to share the humor of the moment. Yet later, when asked to pose for photographs, a chore he dislikes, he sits on a wooden box, lights a Gitane and scowls unrelentingly.

There probably aren’t enough publicists in Hollywood to smooth the rough edges of his raw presence and make Depardieu come across as someone he’s not. It’s an admirable quality; but will it hinder his progress in America?

“I think it’s up to him,” said “1492” director Scott. “Part of the choice in front of him now is how much he’s prepared to go to school and learn generic English. He’ll never lose his accent--and nor should he. That’s part of his character, his artistry, his emotional impulse.

“Gerard’s a one of a kind, and therefore there’s no telling with him. But if he makes concerted efforts to help himself, let’s say with the more insecure parts of the industry in terms of casting . . . if he wants that, he can do it.”

Sigourney Weaver, who plays Queen Isabella in “1492,” says she’s a Depardieu fan from way back. She once co-wrote a cabaret sketch with playwright Christopher Durang, a friend from Yale, in which she played a woman who would “refuse to take any phone calls unless they were from Gerard Depardieu.”

“Could he be a leading man in the U.S.?” Weaver mused. “I’d say he’s already transcended that. He’s a leading man for the world. “

Despite his impetuous and sometimes stormy reputation, both director and actress are full of praise for Depardieu’s on-set conduct. “This was the best experience I ever had with an actor,” Scott enthused. “He’s so intuitive and has a natural taste level. It was easy, not hard work at all.

“Being French-speaking and delivering dialogue in English, Gerard could have been insecure--and that could have had unfortunate repercussions. But he has his own confidence built in.”

Nor, as Scott tells it, is Depardieu prone to displays of star ego: “He is more of a team player than anyone I’ve ever known. He’s completely involved with the film, the unit, with what’s going on.

“One day in Spain, I was shooting a sequence with Armand Assante on horseback, and Gerard had the day off--he was not going to be called. And Gerard came along to the set and watched the scene from over a wall, just seeing what was going on. I need hardly tell you that never happens. Ever. “

Weaver had already acted with Depardieu in a 1985 French film called “Une Femme ou Deux (One Woman or Two).” “It’s hard to work in a different language,” she recalled, “and Gerard was incredibly generous to me because he felt I was doing something difficult. He was protective and encouraging.

“I’ve worked with a lot of wonderful actors, and he’s the most remarkable because of his tremendous joy. I find him easy to work with because (on the set) he’s all over the place like some mischievous child. Then when he starts to do a scene his concentration is so enormous. He never worries about how he looks or how he’s doing.”

*

This extraordinary self-confidence first saw the light of day in an anonymous town called Chateauroux, 160 miles south of Paris. Gerard Xavier Depardieu was born there almost 44 years ago, the third of six children. His father was a sheet-metal worker with a drinking problem; the family lived in a rented house, depending on loans and welfare payments for survival.

The boy grew up with an ambivalent relationship toward the law. Near Chateauroux was a U.S. Air Force base, and from his preteen days Depardieu hung around the airmen, swigging Coke, smoking Camels, posing like James Dean or Brando--and selling the Americans black-market goods. He was, to use his own description, “un voyou ,” or hooligan.

Though Depardieu is certainly not above mythologizing about his early days, most accounts of that time state that he stole cars, got into regular trouble with the police and spent an occasional night in a jail cell. School simply did not interest him, though sport did; he was goalkeeper for the local soccer club, and he was a reasonably gifted amateur boxer--even though his nose was once broken when he was sparring with an American airman.

Before he moved from Chateauroux at age 15, Depardieu had left home and moved in with a couple of local prostitutes. When he hit the road, it was for the south of France; he became a beach boy at a resort on the Riviera coast. At 16 he hit Paris, auditioning for TNP, the Theatre Nationale Populaire repertory company, quickly becoming a star pupil. But offstage he spoke incoherently; he needed a speech therapist to help with the problem. Around this time he met his future wife, Elisabeth, a fellow student studying mime and psychology; she was seven years his senior.

After he completed his studies, word quickly spread around Paris of this unconventional young actor, and he threw himself into movies; he would made 32 films by the time he was 30, working for distinguished directors like Bertrand Blier, Marguerite Duras, Alain Resnais and Barbet Schroeder. His fame spread outside France too: Bernardo Bertolucci cast him opposite Robert De Niro in the sprawling epic “1900.”

By the late 1970s, Depardieu was France’s leading film actor, and since then it has seemed that he stars in almost every exported French film--opposite Catherine Deneuve in “The Last Metro” (1980) for Francois Truffaut; “The Return of Martin Guerre” (1982); “Danton” (1982) for Andrzej Wajda; “Jean de Florette” (1985) for Claude Berri; “Camille Claudel” (1988), and for Blier the next year, “Too Beautiful for You.”

Unquestionably his work in “Cyrano de Bergerac” was a high point, and his Oscar nomination last year for the role was merited. But a Time magazine story the month before the Oscar ceremonies quoted Depardieu as saying that he participated in a rape at age 9 and others subsequently, and that he considered this behavior “normal.” The story was carried widely by the American media; women’s groups were outraged. In Paris the press hinted darkly of conspiracies to deprive Depardieu of an Oscar, French Culture Minister Jack Lang came out publicly in his defense, and even French feminists supported him.

Now Depardieu looks morose when the subject is raised. “For me it was stupid. I never said. . . . It was un malentendu, a misunderstanding. All this was just before the Oscars, and the story was such a lot of nonsense, because I was 9! It was a scandal in the press, and it hurt me personally, my wife, my children, everyone around me.”

In describing the incident, Depardieu had used the verb assister , meaning he was present at a rape, rather than assisted in one. Time had asked him to confirm or deny a quote he had made about the incident to Film Comment magazine 13 years previously. So does Depardieu still suspect a conspiracy to remove him from the Oscar race?

“Oh, maybe, why not?” he said with a shrug, suddenly looking bored. “But I don’t care.” And he has taken no legal action against Time? “At first I wanted to sue, but then it was so crazy and stupid, I decided to let it go.”

*

The response seems wholly in character. Depardieu is not a man to hold grudges, nor one to care too much about the way he is perceived publicly. His life is rich and full and goes far beyond acting. On his passport, he lists his profession as acteur-vigneron (actor-winemaker); he owns vineyards near a 14th-Century chateau near Angers where four Anjou wines are produced, one of them known as Cuvee Cyrano.

While working on his current French film, an adaptation of the Emil Zola novel “Germinal,” Depardieu said, he phones his vineyard from the set each day: “It is a very important time of year. The grape harvest starts at the end of September.”

Perhaps the fact that he has other interests in life has helped prevent him from agonizing too much about his film career. “I am very productive because in France you can make some pictures which can be commercial failures, because, at the level you reach, it’s better to take the risk. Sometimes the films are not so good, but that’s OK. In my 80 movies, there is a lot of . . . “--here he uses a French obscenity--”you understand?”

“But all my movies help me. They give you the experience. It’s very hard, and very dangerous, to be successful all the time. The (expletive) makes you human, not a star.”

It is this regular-guy persona that has made Depardieu popular with his compatriots. The French seem to like his unconventional looks, his blunt demeanor, the fact that he has a life outside films and his loyalty to the French movie industry. Interestingly, several of his most popular films in France are broad comedies that have not been distributed abroad. In them, Depardieu typically plays comical blunderers.

But he doesn’t consider himself a star? “Michael Jackson’s a star; Prince is a star,” he said. “I don’t know if there are movie stars anymore. In the movies, you get people like Schwarzenegger, and movies need him because they don’t have stars anymore. Schwarzenegger’s an industry. Even someone like Clint Eastwood is an industry, playing Clint Eastwood.

“I don’t want to be like that. I follow myself. Also, I’m not only an actor. I’m a producer, a distributor; I take care of other people’s talents.”

As an example of this, his colleague Ann Francois said after the interview that Depardieu owns the French rights to Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V,” five films by the late John Cassavetes and “Tomorrow,” a 20-year-old movie starring Duvall--and one reason he was in Deauville.

Certainly Depardieu throws himself more recklessly into film roles than do his American counterparts.

“Oh, but that is finished, that American thing,” he said. “It used to be that most of the big actors did one project at a time and took years. But now this is less than the case. Robert De Niro used to do that, but now he works all the time. Jack Nicholson too. But you have to find the story, it’s hard. Me, I have the opportunity because I read a lot. I mean, I read novels. I love Balzac, I love Proust. We (the French) have many things.”

No one can accuse Depardieu of changing his way of working since his starring role in a big-budget Hollywood feature. Consider his activities in the wake of “1492”: He has just finished a film with the legendary New Wave director Godard, called “Helas Pour Moi (Unfortunately for Me).” After “Germinal,” true, he is making a film for Touchstone Pictures, but it’s a story he knows well--an English-language remake of last year’s French hit “Mon Pere, Ce Heros (My Father, This Hero).” Then he will star in a French film adaptation of the Balzac story “Colonel Chabert.”

*

For all this, Depardieu has been grateful to work outside the French film industry:

“Ridley was wonderful. He likes the idea of not wasting time, because everyone knows from the start precisely what they are going to do. In France, when you make a movie it’s . . . “--he stands and gesticulates, miming with comic precision a director’s indecisiveness--”it’s this way, ummm, no, no, no, it’s that way. . . .” He sits down again, giggling.

“Now I am speaking a lot with young American directors. I would love to work with Hal Hartley. And there’s also another American cinema, with black filmmakers and movies like ‘New Jack City.’ It’s all very exciting. And I love the way they approach cinema in American universities, it’s so . . . passionate.”

It almost sounds as though Gerard Depardieu is ready to expand his horizons drastically. Will France remain home?

“Yes, for the moment,” he said. “But I work much more often out of France now; I’m not here so many days a year.” He looked reflective. “You have to think of these things.”

NEXT WEEK

The continuing cultural debate over Columbus’ image.

THE DIRECTOR

An interview with “1492’s” Ridley Scott. Page 25