PARIS — France’s biggest film star Gerard Depardieu was thrown off a plane after urinating in front of fellow passengers when cabin crew refused to let him use the bathroom.
The 62-year-old actor was caught short on a delayed flight from Paris to Dublin on Tuesday evening as the jet taxied, but his demands to be allowed out of his seat fell on deaf ears, according to another traveler speaking to French radio station Europe 1 on Wednesday morning.
“Je veux pisser, je veux pisser,” implored Depardieu, according to Daniele, who was among the 127 passengers on board the Air France jet left reeling by the antics of the giant of the French screen.
“The attendant said ‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait fifteen minutes, [when] we’ll be in flight. The toilets are locked,'” Daniele added. Depardieu said he could not wait, unzipped his pants and reportedly proceeded to urinate on the carpet.
“You could tell he’d been drinking,” the disgusted passenger claimed.
However, friends of the bon vivant actor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP he said he was “absolutely not drunk” and was actually trying to pee into a bottle as privately as possible.
They confirmed the witness’ account that the stewardess had asked him to wait 15 minutes before the toilets would be opened, and said he had agreed, but added that the flight had then been delayed a further 20 minutes.
A flying companion, fellow actor Edouard Baer, then offered him an empty bottle to ease his aching bladder, AFP said.
When some urine spilled onto the floor, Depardieu was “mortified,” according to a friend and offered to clean it up himself, but the crew decided to turn round and taxi back to the terminal, where he was escorted off the jet by ground crew, the friends said.
The jet was delayed for over an hour as ground crew cleaned up the mess. Depardieu left the plane along with his two traveling companions and their luggage.
“No charges were brought and no fine was imposed, and he had the impression that his position about the misunderstanding and the inflexible attitude of the stewardess had been understood by those he spoke to,” one friend told AFP.
The source also said Depardieu had been able to take the next flight to Dublin.
Air France confirmed the incident took place in a statement Wednesday, saying, Depardieu “did indeed urinate in the aircraft.”
Depardieu, arguably France’s most celebrated living actor, has enjoyed a career spanning four decades and well over a hundred films. He is best known outside France for the film “Green Card,” for which he won a Golden Globe best actor award.
The actor was traveling to Ireland to film scenes for his upcoming movie “Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia.”
Depardieu prides himself on his reputation as a bon viveur but has often admitted that he drinks too much. He has claimed several times to have given up alcohol entirely, but events indicated limited success.
His recent antics included head-butting a photographer in Italy, calling a French interviewer a “b*tch” on TV and rambling incoherently in crude language. He told a British interviewer in 2005 that he drank “between four and eight bottles” of wine a day.