By Abid Rahman. International Editor, Digital. French movie star Gerard Depardieu has in the past made headlines with his conservative political views and his decision to pee on an airplane. Just in time for the holiday season, he caused a political and media firestorm by moving to a border town in Belgium to avoid higher taxes. In France, the top rate of income tax is scheduled to rise to 75 percent in Some celebrities have opposed the higher tax on the rich promoted by president Francois Hollande.
In an open letter, the Oscar-nominated actor later responded to criticism and threatened to hand back his French passport in protest. The bad boy of French cinema wrote that he worked as a male escort as a teenager on the streets of Chateauroux, where he was born, and then later Paris. Depardieu admitted that he would occasionally also mug his clients. I would beat up some bloke and leave with all his money. Depardieu, best known in the U.
His life of crime extended to some grave-robbing too, helping a man to dig up freshly buried bodies to steal jewelry and clothing. Unsurprisingly, Depardieu devoted space in the book to his legendary appetite for alcohol. The actor recently claimed that he can easily drink 14 bottles of wine a day, and he claimed he drinks not because of alcoholism but to get away from the phobias that plague him. Depardieu also touches upon his highly controversial decision to obtain Russian citizenship to avoid paying an 87 percent tax for high-income individuals in France.
Russian president Vladimir Putin also featured prominently in the book after Depardieu struck up a friendship with him and both realized they had much in common.
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