Famous French Director and Producer Luc Besson Accused of Rape

Yesterday, French radio station Europe 1 reported that Paris authorities have opened an investigation against French film director Luc Besson, after an actress told them that he had raped her the night before.

According to the complaint, the actress says that she met Besson on Thursday evening at the Bristol hotel in Paris as the Cannes Film Festival was wrapping up. She describes how she was given a cup of tea and blacked out after drinking it, and awoke realizing that she had been raped. She says that the director left a wad of money for her before departing. The actress also noted that she had previously been in an intimate relationship with Besson for two years, one that she felt pressured into for "professional reasons."

In a statement to AFP News Service, Besson's lawyer says that the director "categorically denies these fantasist accusations," and that the actress is "someone he knows, towards whom he has never behaved inappropriately."

The director of films such as Fifth Element, Lucy, and most recently, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Besson has a history of dating younger actresses: he began dating his second wife, Maïwenn Le Besco in 1991 when she was 15 years old (Besson was 32 at the time), and they had a daughter two years later. Le Besco has noted that Besson's 1994 film Léon: The Professional, was inspired in part by their relationship, and that then 11-year-old star Natalie Portman's parents demanded numerous changes to the script because of age-inappropriate content.

The accusation against Besson comes on the heels of a wave of complaints from within Hollywood of sexual misconduct from high-powered directors, actors, and producers, starting with executive Harvey Weinstein last year. These revelations caused...