Billy Gardell, who had bariatric surgery in 2022 that helped him shed 150 pounds, recently told “Live with Kelly and Mark” he transformed from a “young Jackie Gleason to an old Paul Newman.”

The massive weight loss, he said, eliminated his type 2 diabetes, improved his resting heart rate from 113 to 68 and reduced both his blood pressure and cholesterol to normal levels.

“It’s been two years and I’m not used to it,” he said. “I still don’t fully recognize myself.”

He has managed to maintain his weight between 205 to 210 but said it takes work.

“It’s the hardest part and the best part,” he said. “I have to consistently eat right every day, take care of myself water-wise, protein-wise and vitamin-wise and keep to my regimen. I work with a nutritionist. We talk once a week with a video check. I weigh myself every day. I am really committed to this.”

Being lighter, he said, has changed his life in multiple ways.

“Just to be able to move with more grace,” Gardell said. “I can fit into an airplane seat. I don’t need to take a deep breath to tie my shoes. I can shop at normal stores. I don’t have to walk into a place and wonder if a chair will hold me. There’s a freedom that you can only understand if you were heavy.”

The surgery happened between seasons of his show “Bob Hearts Abishola,” an ensemble sitcom which ends its five-season run May 7. This is Gardell’s second show under producer Chuck Lorre (”The Big Bang Theory,” “Two and a Half Men,” “Mom”) after six seasons on “Mike & Molly.” The concept focuses on an unlikely mixed race couple: a middle-aged man named Bob from Detroit (Gardell) falling in love with his Nigerian-American cardiac nurse (Folake Olowofoyeku) while recovering from a heart attack.

With budgets cut and ratings down, CBS only gave the show a fifth season if most of the cast only showed up part of the time. In the end, Gardell was happy to get 96 episodes and a show that will go into syndication.

“I don’t pay close attention to what goes on behind those business doors,” Gardell said. “I just play the best game I can. With two shows from Chuck Lorre, I was able to play third base for 11 years.”

For now, he’s focusing on stand-up. But with his weight loss, he said he feels different on stage.

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French actor Gérard Depardieu will face a criminal trial in October over the alleged sexual assaults in 2021 of two women on the set of a film, prosecutors announced Monday.

The 75-year-old actor, who previously has denied any wrongdoing, was detained for questioning by police in Paris for several hours earlier Monday.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the actor has been “summoned to appear before the criminal court” after the questioning.

A trial will start in October “for sexual assaults likely to have been committed in September 2021” against “two victims, on the set of the film ‘The Green Shutters,’ ” the statement said. It did not name the alleged victims.

French newspaper Le Parisien has reported that a 53-year-old movie decorator has alleged that Depardieu grabbed her and kneaded her waist, stomach and breasts during filming for “Les Volets verts,” or “The Green Shutters,” according to the woman’s lawyer, Carine Durrieu Diebolt, when she filed the complaint to the Paris prosecutor’s office in February.

In an open letter last October, Depardieu said: “I have never, ever abused a woman.”

Depardieu has also been accused by more than a dozen other women of harassing, groping or sexually assaulting them. He was handed preliminary rape and sexual assault charges in 2020 following allegations from actor Charlotte Arnould.

Depardieu was long seen as a national icon in France. He has been a global ambassador for French film and enjoyed international fame with several roles in Hollywood.

The latest episode involving Depardieu came as French cinema is roiled by a #metoo awakening following actor Judith Godrèche’s call for France’s film industry to “face the truth” on sexual violence and physical abuse. She made that appeal during a live broadcast in February of the Cesar Awards ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars.

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Morgan Freeman spoke the words, but pretty much everyone who took the stage at the AFI Life Achievement Award agreed: “ Nicole Kidman. She makes movies better.”

The line came in a video parody of Kidman's AMC Theatres “we make movies better” ad that opened the Saturday night ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. It got huge laughs from the crowd of multigenerational A-listers there to honor the 40-year career of the 56-year-old Australian that has included roles in “Moulin Rouge,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and an Oscar-winning turn in “The Hours.”

Meryl Streep, Kidman's “The Hours” co-star who presented to Streep the Life Achievement Award that she won herself in 2004, got laughs nearly as big when, in a mock-boastful voice, she described the hardest part of being “incessantly called the greatest actress of my generation.”

It's when you come up against someone else who is “really, really, really, really, really, really great” and you realize they did things you couldn’t do, as happened with Kidman the first day they worked together on the HBO series “Big Little Lies," Streep said.

Streep and their “Big Little Lies” co-star Reese Witherspoon both did spot-on, Australian-accented impressions of Kidman that had the audience in stitches.

Streep also drew tears from Kidman when describing what she believed motivated her.

“People call it bravery when an actress bares all and leaps off into the unknown and she dives deep into the darker parts of what it is to be a human being,” Streep said. “But I don’t think it’s bravery. I think it’s love. I think she just loves it.”

Kidman teared up for the first time in the evening when her husband and fellow Australian, singer Keith Urban, said she showed him “what love in action really looks like” when his substance abuse problems emerged almost immediately after they wed in 2006.

“Four months into our marriage, I’m in rehab for three months,” Urban said, looking at Kidman where she sat on a dais with their two daughters and other family. “Nic pushed through every negative voice, I’m sure even some of her own, and she chose love. And here we are 18 years later.”

Kidman said the night was the first time she allowed their teenage daughters to join her on a red carpet. She also has two children with her first husband, Tom Cruise.

She accepted the AFI award in the same venue where she accepted her Oscar in 2003 for playing Virginia Woolf in “The Hours."

She thanked by name every director she has worked with, including Stanley Kubrick, Jane Campion, Baz Luhrmann, Sofia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sydney Pollack and Lars von Trier.

“It is a privilege to make films. And glorious to have made films and television with these storytellers who allowed me to run wild and be free and play all of these unconventional women," Kidman said, wearing a floor-length, glittering-gold gown. “Thank you for making me better at my craft and giving me a place, however temporary, in this world.”

It was announced back in November of 2022 that Kidman would receive the award, first handed out in 1973, whose previous winners include Orson Welles, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Gene Kelly, Sidney Poitier, Barbara Streisand, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Denzel Washington and Julie Andrews.

The ceremony originally was scheduled for June of 2023, but delayed because of Hollywood’s strikes. It will air on TNT on June 17.

Kidman also was nominated for Academy Awards for “Moulin Rouge,” “Rabbit Hole,” “Lion,” and “Being the Ricardos," whose director, Aaron Sorkin, also sang her praises at the ceremony.

Others honoring her included Zac Efron, Miles Teller, Zoe Saldana and Mike Myers, who came on stage in disguise in one of the eerie orgy masks from “Eyes Wide Shut.”

From combined wire services