Gerard Depardieu: I was a male escort

Actor Gerard Depardieu. Photo / Getty Images

French actor Gerard Depardieu has stunned fans by revealing he use to work as a male prostitute.

Depardieu, who rose to international fame following his performance in Green Card, has reached back to his earliest memories for his memoir Ca c'est fait comme ca (It Happened Like That).

One of the more shocking revelations Depardieu makes in the book is about his time working as a prostitute in the small town of Chateauroux in central France.

Depardieu says men would proposition him while roaming the streets from the age of 10.

"I've known since I was very young that I please homosexuals. (When men approached me for sex), I would ask them for money," he writes.

The actor writes about the three weeks he spent behind bars at the age of 16 for auto theft and admits he use to mug sex clients at the height of his escort career.

"At 20, the thug in me was alive and kicking. I would rip some of them off. I would beat up some bloke and leave with all his money."

He also claims he would dig up graves to steal the clothes and jewellery from freshly-buried bodies.

Depardieu also explains he drinks heavily to overcome the phobias he has about his body.

"I'm obsessed with the racket in my body, the beating of my heart, the gurgling of my intestines, my joints cracking.

"It's become a phobia to the point that if I'm alone in a hotel, I must drink so as not to hear it, so as not to go mad from it. I can't get to sleep unless I am dead drunk."

- WENN