Mystery over death of Guillaume Depardieu

Mystery surrounds the last days of the French actor Guillaume Depardieu, son of Gerard Depardieu, who, as reported here yesterday, has died at 37 from complications related to pneumonia. It was initially thought that he had contracted pneumonia at the Raymond Poincare Hospital in Paris where he died.

But it now seems he became ill while filming in Bucharest last week and there are allegations that Romanian doctors failed to diagnosis his condition accurately. Only when he was flown back to France by air ambulance was he correctly examined and found to have suffered a septic shock.

Romanian doctors who saw Depardieu at the Floreasca Emergency Hospital in Bucharest refused to talk to the press. However, hospital manager Claudiu Turculet declared that the patient had received the best possible medical care and claimed the French Embassy had written thanking the hospital for their efficiency.

As a young man, Guillaume had problems with drugs, alcohol and violence. In 2003 he had his right leg amputated to end years of pain from a bacterial infection that followed a motorcycle accident. In the same year he had a public falling out with his father, when he wrote a tell-all book in which he called Gerard a drunken miser. He also revealed that, as part of his teenage rebellion against his father, he had once acted as a male prostitute.