France's leading actor Gerard Depardieu said he is giving up his French passport after the Prime Minister called him “pathetic” for seeking to avoid taxes by moving to Belgium.

At no time have I failed in my duties. The historic films in which I took part bear witness to my love of France and its history

In an open letter to Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, the 63-year-old Cyrano de Bergerac and Jean de Florette film star said he had been treated unfairly after years of supporting France and paying millions of euros in taxes.

“I am not asking to be approved of but I could at least be respected. All of those who have left France have not been insulted as I have been,” he said in the letter published in the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

Depardieu has joined some of France's wealthiest business figures in Belgium following moves by President François Hollande’s Socialist Government to tax annual incomes above €1 million at 75 per cent.

In the letter, Depardieu, who has extensive business interests including wine estates and three Paris restaurants, accused the Socialists of driving France’s most talented figures out of the country.

“I am leaving because you consider that success, creation, talent, anything different, must be punished,” he said.

Depardieu said that over 45 years of working and running businesses in France he had paid €145 million to state coffers: “At no time have I failed in my duties. The historic films in which I took part bear witness to my love of France and its history.”

He started working at the age of 14 and never claimed social security, the star added. “Who are you to judge me in this way?” he asked Ayrault.

Ayrault’s comments came after it emerged that Depardieu had taken up residence in Nechin, a tiny village just over the border in Belgium, which is a favoured spot for wealthy French nationals avoiding tax.

“I find it quite pathetic,” Ayrault had said. “Everyone loves him as an artist, but paying your taxes is an act of solidarity and patriotism.”

Under French law, Depardieu would have to obtain another nationality before formally renouncing his French citizenship.

Nadine Morano a former minister in the right-wing opposition party UMP, said she was “saddened” by Depardieu's decision, describing him as a victim of the government's “fiscal onslaught”.

Laurence Parisot, the head of the French employers federation Medef, said the real issue was not Depardieu, “it is that today in our country a tax madness is at work”.

Unlike France, Belgium does not impose a wealth tax. Its income and inheritance taxes are also lower.