Gerard Depardieu    He Stokes The Creative Fires With Passion By PAUL CHUTKOW BOUGIVAL, France All afternoon Gerard Depardieu has been talking about his rage for acting, for getting deeply embroiled with auteur directors and their creative torments, for rollicking from film to film, from stage to stage, with an almost reckless abandon and outlaw joy. Now, suddenly, he thrusts up his hand: "Wait! Come!" Mr. Depardieu storms through his house and into his study. It is a a swirl of energy and clutter. A Cesar, France's equivalent of an Oscar, sits on a side table begging for polish; his desk is a chaos of papers and books. From the chaos he picks up what looks to be a schoolboy's notebook, carefully bound and protected with a cover of red. The notebook arrived just yesterday; it is a draft script written by the celebrated French director Bertrand Blier, Mr. Depardieu's creative alter ego. In a rush, the actor is poring through Mr. Blier's prose, his fingers flying through the pages, searching for just the right passages, just the right inspiration. "Voila! Listen to this! Listen to this!" Mr. Depardieu spreads open a page and, with a thick forefinger, fixes his point of departure. In the light of the desk lamp, his huge, expressive face seems to set into an almost spellbound concentration, and when he starts reading aloud, his face takes on a glowing incandescence: "The eyes of a father, they are made to cry. . ." This is it, the moment Mr. Depardieu craves: the start of another impassioned creative voyage. Money? Fame? Another Cesar? These may drive other actors, but Mr. Depardieu waves them away with a Gallic "Bof." What he seeks are fresh connections, artist to artist, poet to poet. All afternoon he has tried to explain it, but it is only now, seeing him use the words of the text to fuel his own creative fires, that you begin to understand Mr. Depardieu's insatiable drive. "I take the words of others. And when an author opens his papers to you and lets you read, it is a privileged moment. I give him air, breath," Mr. Depardieu explained earlier this afternoon. "What drives me is human beings, connections. If you can find the energy of the other, together you can sing." Over the last two decades, Mr. Depardieu and his powerful acting have come to dominate movie screens in France and much of Europe. The Times of London recently wrote that with the possible exception of Robert De Niro, Mr. Depardieu is "the greatest screen actor in the world." In France he is frequently compared with Mr. De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Marlon Brando, Marcello Mastroianni and the legendary French actor Jean Gabin. Over the years he has done some 60 films, often making three or four a year, and while some critics say he should slow down and choose his roles more carefully, French film magazines report no slackening of his box-office appeal. In America, Mr. Depardieu is best known for such films as Mr. Blier's early classic, "Going Places," Francois Truffaut's "Last Metro," Claude Berri's "Jean de Florette," and also "Danton" and "The Return of Martin Guerre." At the moment, Mr. Depardieu is enjoying double billing in movie houses in the United States: playing the sculptor Auguste Rodin in "Camille Claudel," opposite Isabelle Adjani, an Oscar nominee, and starring in Mr. Blier's latest twist on the eternal love triangle, "Too Beautiful for You," which opened in New York on Friday. (When it opened the New York Film Festival last year, Vincent Canby of The Times described the film as an "exceptionally rich romantic comedy.") In an unusual honor for a French actor, one Manhattan theater recently featured a Depardieu retrospective, right beside a Brando retrospective. But now Mr. Depardieu's American adventure really begins. This month in Manhattan he starts shooting "Greencard," his first major English-language film. "Greencard" is the story of a somewhat lost Frenchman who makes his way to New York and enters into an arranged marriage with an American woman, with the sole intent of securing a green card - in effect, working papers. The film, a Franco-Australian production, is being directed by Australia's Peter Weir, renowned in France for "The Year of Living Dangerously," "Witness" and "Mosquito Coast." His latest film, "Dead Poets Society," a nominee for an Academy Award as best picture of 1989, is now a surprise smash success in Paris. On the eve of his departure for New York, Mr. Depardieu agreed to sit still for an interview, here at his home in the village of Bougival, just west of Paris. Mr. Depardieu, it turns out, never quite sits still. In fact, meeting him for the first time is a disorienting experience. His house, at the top of a hill, at the end of a lane, is a faithful reflection of the man: big, warm, rambling, full of moods and shadows, a labyrinth of crannies and unexpected passageways, many looking inward to a sunlit interior garden hidden from the street. Like so many French country houses, there is something soothing about its ancient wood and its rich kitchen smells, soothing until the staircase starts rumbling and Monsieur Depardieu himself comes thundering down, sweeping everything up into his volcanic energy. As part of his preparation for "Greencard," Mr. Depardieu has shed some 40 pounds, so today he does not look as giant as he often does on screen. He dresses somberly, in a gray suit and a black knit shirt, open at the neck. As always, his head is framed by two great curtains of dark blond hair, draping down to his shoulders; his big clown face looks as though it were constructed by Picasso during an outlandish Cubist fit. The Depardieu jaw struts forth like a clenched fist waved in the air; his right eye sits markedly lower than the left, and his great stretch of nose, so perfect for playing Cyrano de Bergerac, veers down his face in an extravagant sweep to the right. Everything about Mr. Depardieu moves in a frenzied rush. Conversations swirl out in bold, nonconcentric circles, which he miraculously does get closed. The word "actor" elicits from him streams of reflections, from Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper to Robin Williams and Tom Cruise, from Jean Gabin and Bernard Blier to Yves Montand and Patrick Dewaere. "Director" summons forth stories and opinions on Keaton, Lubitsch, Chaplin, Fritz Lang, Erich von Stroheim, Truffaut, Fellini and a fistful of modern directors in France. Actresses? Out pour stories about Isabelle Adjani, Catherine Deneuve, Miou-Miou, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant. Mr. Depardieu talks the way he acts: break the rules, strip away the facades, reveal the essence. "Acting is perhaps the adolescence I never had" Mr. Depardieu said. "As a child, I never knew how to talk. I had to study the theater in order to learn the language." Gerard Depardieu, now 41 years old, grew up in Chateauroux, a rough backwater in rural central France. He was one of six children in a very poor family. Lilette and Dede Depardieu were stolid and withdrawn parents, and Mr. Depardieu said they were clearly unable to comprehend their unusual son. His parents never imposed on him any restraints, and by the age of 10 he was already roaming the streets, frequenting many of the bars and hangouts favored by the 7,000 U.S. Air Force men who were then stationed in the area of Chateauroux. Already he was searching for precisely what he did not find at home: the chance to express himself and connect emotionally. "My parents left me open to everything, I never had any restrictions, and in that sense I was fortunate," Mr. Depardieu said. "But they could never say, 'Je t'aime'; and I rarely saw them touch each other." As the interview stretched on into the night, over wine and cheese, Mr. Depardieu filled in the colors of his unusual childhood in the 1950's: jeans and leather jackets, the Air Force PX, banana splits at the snack bar, a black American girl named Ronnie and an American Indian pal named Red Cloud. It was around the U.S. base that he discovered movies and an inspiring rebel hero: James Dean. This was his education, a sliver of America in the heart of France. "I soaked up everything," Mr. Depardieu remembers. "It was like being on an aircraft carrier on an uncharted sea." He took in so much, so young, that in his early teens he mysteriously lost his ability to speak for almost two years. Finally he connected with Prof. Alfred Tomatis, a French speech therapist known for his work with stutterers, stage actors and opera singers. The doctor discovered that young Depardieu had an ear that was literally too sensitive; it took in too much sound. With therapy and rehabilitation, Mr. Depardieu said he came away with an ear so finely tuned it almost literally imprints speech and text directly into his memory. But he still had no direction. In his long hair and jeans, he drifted along, passing for a beatnik or a petty thug. He discovered he had a talent for playing the chameleon, and he started making up stories about his life and background, just to see people's reaction. One day he was picked up hitchhiking, and the driver asked him what he did. "I said, 'I'm a student of the theater.' POFF! His face lit up. It was a total lie, of course, but it was then I first realized how the theater could make people dream." Everything started clicking into place. He came to Paris, enrolled in the acting school of the Theatre Nationale Populaire; and at the age of 16 he made another connection: he met a fellow theater student named Elisabeth Guignot, who understood and enjoyed his turbulent, unconventional ways. Four years later, when he was 20, he and Elisabeth were married. Today they have a son, Guillaume, and a daughter, Julie, and now Elisabeth Depardieu has resumed her own acting career on the Paris stage. As in Hollywood, the world of French film is known more for divorce and dangerous liaisons than it is for marital stability. So how does Mr. Depardieu explain the steadfastness of their marriage? Part of it, he said, was how well Elisabeth understands him. "She goes very, very fast," he explained. "Gifted people get bored if it goes too slow." The other major defining connection in Mr. Depardieu's life was with Bertrand Blier, a Parisian from a completely different background. The son of the French character actor Bernard Blier, Bertrand was raised in the sophisticated Parisian society of actors, directors and artists like Pierre Brasseur, Jean Gabin, Michel Simon and Yves Montand. Young Blier tried his hand at writing scripts, but none worked; he then wrote a picaresque novel about a merry band of three reckless kids drifting down the road, Jack Kerouac-style. And Depardieu style. The novel, titled "Les Valseuses," was an instant success. Mr. Blier turned it into a screenplay, and Gerard Depardieu starred in the film. "Les Valseuses," shown in America as "Going Places," became a cult film in France, and the two men have been close ever since. They have merged their talents in such films as "Get Out Your Handkerchiefs," "Buffet Froid," "Menage" and now "Too Beautiful for You." The new Blier script from which Mr. Depardieu read is titled "Merci, La Vie," and it interweaves two difficult time periods and two difficult themes: Nazism and AIDS. Across eight hours of conversation, the actor always circled back to this special relationship, similar to that between Italy's Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini. Writing directly for Mr. Depardieu seems to anchor and liberate the introverted Mr. Blier's writing talent; Mr. Blier's scripts seem to tap directly into the extroverted Mr. Depardieu's innermost resources. "I feel myself completely feminine in this craft," Mr. Depardieu said. "I don't believe in the Stallone image of the big-boy hero. And much of the public doesn't either. The biggest success goes to actors like Cruise and Hoffman, who show their faults and their weaknesses rather than projecting an image of invulnerability. "Acting, in itself, I know how to do," Mr. Depardieu said. "It's not my goal. My biggest joy, what drives me, is working with an 'auteur,' an author, a creative director. There are not many actors who can do it. I can." Mr. Depardieu has also gone out of his way to protect and promote other creative work. He has quietly lent a shoulder to the legendary Bengali director Satyajit Ray. He helped produce Mr. Ray's recent film, "Ganashatru," and he intends to set up a foundation to protect Mr. Ray's work. On this very afternoon, Mr. Depardieu concluded an agreement to distribute in France the bold new film version of "Henry V," directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh. Besides starring in a film version of "Cyrano de Bergerac," Mr. Depardieu intends to do a stage version of "Othello," and as preparation for himself and the public, he will take "Henry V" to French universities. Mr. Depardieu is understandably uneasy about working across the Atlantic in America. But he sees in Peter Weir the kind of European-style auteur director with whom he can connect. Already Mr. Depardieu is deeply embroiled with the director in polishing the script for "Greencard," and he has returned to Professor Tomatis for help with his English. As he himself admits, his English is very far from perfect; but Mr. Depardieu enjoys the risk. He feels it will help him arrive on the set feeling just as ill at ease as so many French people who arrive in New York. At this stage, Mr. Depardieu feels no pull toward Hollywood. Like many European actors and directors, he feels the best American films are now coming from independent and unconventional film makers working outside and often against the big studio tradition. In his view, European films, with their more limited means and their tightly knit families of actors, offer far greater freedom to explore what's fresh and provocative. And in terms of the human connections Mr. Depardieu craves, what Hollywood director or producer would ever send him a script with this kind of brotherly inscription, from Mr. Blier: "Personal copy for Mr. Gerard Depardieu, eminent artist, faithful companion on the road of life, indispensable surprise of my daily life." Copyright The New York Times Company