French actor Gerard Depardieu, who recently obtained Russian nationality, will have his home address on Democracy Street in Saransk, Mordovia region, announced Friday the news agency Ria Novosti, cited by AFP.
“As required by law, Gérard Depardieu will be registered with a residential address in Russia,” said a source from the authorities of Mordovia, a Russian republic in which the city of Saransk is located, 650 kilometers from Moscow.
The same source told RIA Novosti that French actor’s address is at the home of his friend, Nicolai Borodatchev director of the Russian film archives, a native of that region. The address is located on the Democracy (Demokratitcheskaïa) Street, said RIA Novosti.
“Depardieu is not the owner of the apartment, he will only be registered at that address, as the owners agreed,” added the same source.
Gérard Depardieu, aged 64, received in early January from Vladimir Putin the Russian citizenship after a dispute with French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who said that the decision of the French star to leave France and move to Belgium for financial reasons is “pathetic”. The French star said on that occasion that Russia is a “great democracy” and criticized the Russian opposition and the Pussy Riot group.
After meeting with Vladimir Putin in January, Depardieu has visited Mordovia, a region otherwise known for its detention camps. One of the two members of the Pussy Riot group is serving her sentence of two years in prison, after she performed with her band an anti-Putin punk prayer at a Moscow cathedral.
Gérard Depardieu, who later said he would keep his French citizenship and, in fact, still intends to get Belgian citizenship, has not indicated whether he has palns to live in Saransk. Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted in mid-January Nikolay Borodatchev, who said that the French actor asked him to build “a beautiful wooden house” for him near Moscow. Gérard Depardieu is expected Friday at the opening of Illusion Cinema in Moscow, whose director is Nikolay Borodatchev. Depardieu will go to Mordovia on Saturday, according to RIA Novosti.
Gérard Depardieu decided to leave France in protest against higher taxes for wealthy citizens. Depardieu announced that the decision of the Constitutional Council (CC) to cancel the 75% tax rate applied to rich people “changes nothing” in his determination to move into Belgium and demand Russian citizenship. Gérard Depardieu’s move to Néchin, a Belgian village near the French border, where rich migrants live, provoked a fierce controversy in France.
Gérard Depardieu is one of the most famous French actors; he starred in more than 100 films, including the series “Asterix”, but lately he was in the headlines for reasons not related to his artistic career. In the summer of 2011, worldwide media wrote that the French actor, suffering from urinary incontinence, was trying to urinate discreetly into a bottle as the stewardess denied him access to the toilet on the plane which was getting ready to take off.
Gérard Depardieu won numerous prestigious awards throughout his career in film, including an Oscar nomination for memorable role in “Cyrano de Bergerac” and a Golden Globe for his role in the movie “Green Card”.
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