Some people might be daunted to appear on a hugely popular American talk show with only a rudimentary command of the English language.  Not French actor Gérard Depardieu.  Dressed in black jeans and a black zip-up jacket, Depardieu strides onstage at Late Night with David Letterman, longish blond hair flopping around his head, and settles his massive six-foot-two form into a chair beside his host.  Giggling and waving to the audience, he waits politely for Letterman to being questioning him.  Letterman chooses not to dwell on any of the more than 65 movies that the hyperproductive Depardieu has made since the mid-Sixties, asking his subject, instead, about his upbringing -- ordinarily a safe enough topic.

"What was your childhood like?" asks Letterman sincerely.  "Comment?" queries Depardieu, leaning in closer as though that might aid comprehension.  Letterman rephrases the questions.  Depardieu brightens, then says he considered himself lucky as a kid, because "my father was dead drink all the day."  Letterman:  "He was -- I'm sorry?"  "Yes," smiles Depardieu.  "Dead drunk."  Letterman:  "Oh, he drank?"  Depardieu nods, "Dead drunk all the day."  Soon it also comes out that Depardieu's mother was "always pregnant" and the young Gérard ran away from home when he was 15.

"Did you steal?" asks Letterman, brow furrowed.  Depardieu, arms folded across his capacious chest, waits a beat then smiles.  "Steal?  Yes, of course."

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This isn't exactly the usual fodder for a movie star profile, and Letterman quickly moves on. But it doesn't matter, Depardieu already has the studio audience eating out of the palm of his hand. With a combination of winks, grins, eloquent gestures and comedic pauses, the shambling 42-year-old actor has delivered yet another charming star turn. Despite the fact that he couldn't carry on a sustained conversation with any non-French-speaking person in the room, the audience knows exactly who he is: a funny, passionate rebel from a sprawling lower-class family, who can come across as an ordinary Joe just as easily as he can launch into extended meditations on the nature of painting and literature.

What they might not know is that Depardieu is the undisputed heavyweight of European cinema.
Check out the foreign films section of your local video store. Chances are he has starred in half the movies on the shelves. Depardieu has been known to make as many as six features a year, including these better-known imports: Claude Berri's Jean de Florette, Bruno Nuytten's Camille Claudel, François Truffaut's The Last Metro and a string of buddy comedies directed by Francis Veber. Even this truncated list reveals why Depardieu is France's De Niro and Schwarzenegger wrapped into one - though his range most immediately calls to mind Meryl Streep, and physically, he's not unlike that pensive lug Nick Nolte. Depardieu can shift from slapstick comedy to abstruse intellectual conceit with startling fluidity: One minute he's an earnest, hunchbacked peasant, then a loutish revolutionary, then a sculptor who thinks with his hands, then a love-struck transvestite. But to every part, Depardieu brings an uncanny ability to be at once brutal and kind, vile yet sensual. He's a creature of gigantic contradictions.

The Hollywood powers that be are counting on Depardieu's broad-based appeal to finally break the actor to stateside audiences this year. Already he's delivered a tour-de-force performance in Jean-Paul Rappeneau's elaborate period piece, the $20 million Cyrano de Bergerac. (The character was updated and spoofed by Steve Martin in 1987's Roxanne, a movie Depardieu says he never saw, although he adds, "I like very, very much Steve Martin.") Depardieu's swaggering, tender turn as this storyteller/swordsman par excellence, whose large protuberance is but one indication of his vitality, snagged him the best actor award at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Many predict that an Oscar nomination isn't far behind.  Then there's his American debut in Green Card, directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poet's Society). This easygoing romantic comedy stars Depardieu as a bohemian Frenchman named George, newly arrived to New York, who marries a prissy horticulturalist in order to obtain U.S. citizenship. When the immigration officials start cracking down on these illegal unions, George has to find out everything about his alleged wife, Bronte (played by Andie MacDowell). Thus a comedy of opposites is born: He's a zesty, meat-eating slob; she's a well-bred, low-key vegetarian. Of course, they fall in love.  Weir says he never had anyone else but Depardieu in mind for the role. In fact, the director wrote it expressly for him.

In Cyrano de Bergerac

In Green Card with, from left, Jessie Keosian, Andie MacDowell and Bebe Neuwirth

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