'I'm good at playing characters I don't like': Depardieu drops hint he'll star in DSK film

One internationally renowned French bad boy may, it seems, play another in a film next year.

The actor Gérard Depardieu gave credence yesterday to rumours that he had been asked to play a character based on the disgraced former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a movie to be filmed next year.

"You know what rumours are," Depardieu said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. "But in general terms I am quite good at playing characters that I don't like or people that don't resemble me."

There have been persistent rumours in France that Depardieu has agreed to play a character loosely based on Mr Strauss-Kahn with Isabelle Adjani tentatively cast as his wife, Anne Sinclair. A French production company, Wild Bunch, denied commissioning the film but Depardieu's refusal to shoot down the reports yesterday is the firmest indication so far that they may be correct.

The film would, according to the reports, be loosely based on the arrest of Mr Strauss-Kahn in May for the attempted rape of a maid in New York. Criminal charges were dropped in August but a civil case continues.

The actor, who will be 63 tomorrow, provoked outraged headlines in August when he urinated publicly into a bottle during a flight. He later apologised for the incident but appeared unabashed, and amused, yesterday. "An air hostess deliberately blocked me from going to the toilet. So I peed and had a wonderful sense of relief. I did what I had to do," he said.