Catherine Deneuve, who achieved global stardom in the 1960s with her starring role in Jacques Demy’s colorful musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and her chilling performance in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), has been hailed as the very essence of French elegance in the world of cinema.
Deneuve, 82, was born into a family of actors. She had her debut in 1957, landing a role in the French film The Twilight Girls.
Following her role in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of the many films of Jacques Demy in which she would take part through her illustrious career, her acting skills would catch the attention of renowned filmmaker Roman Polanski. With her role of Carol, a woman suffering from violent schizophrenia, in the psychological thriller Repulsion, Deneuve established herself as the “ice maiden” type.
Later on, she continued to reinforce this image in Belle de Jour, in which she portrayed a bourgeois housewife with a secret profession as a prostitute.
In 1967, Deneuve starred in The Young Girls of Rochefort along with her sister who was just a year older than her. However, despite they weren’t twins in real life, the sisters were so much alike that it wasn’t hard to portray twin sisters on screen.
Sadly, three months after the release of the film, Catherine Deneuve’s sister, Françoise Dorléac, who was 25 at the time, was killed in a car crash.
“The day I lost my sister, I lost my joy of living…it is the most painful thing that I have experienced,” the actress said in an interview with Paris Match, a weekly French magazine.
Over the course of her career, Deneuve starred in over 120 films. Speaking of how the industry has changed over the years, she said in an interview with The Talks, “Human nature is a very wide thing. There are roles that are more in relation with people of my generation. When you grow older in life, it’s the same thing. You have an experience and a type of character that you cannot play if you are 30, let’s say.
“It’s difficult to find a good path. You can grow older better in Europe than in America, that’s for sure. But women seem to be younger than they were 50 years ago. It’s the evolution of human beings, ah? 40 years ago, when you see a 50-year-old woman, she looked her age. Today, much less.”
Deneuve only landed roles in a handful of English movies, including The April Fools (1969) with Jack Lemmon, Hustle (1973) with Burt Reynolds, March or Die (1977) with Gene Hackman, and the 1983 cult favorite The Hunger alongside David Bowie and Susan Sarandon.
She also explained why she mainly stared in French films. “I feel very French, but I speak Italian and English, so I feel very European. But I don’t feel close to English people, for example. It’s not that far away geographically, but I don’t feel close to English people because it’s such a different sensibility, such different characters.”
She added, “We are so different. I feel closer to Spanish or Italian people than to English people. Because of the nature of the Latin character compared to an Anglo-Saxon character. We have different educations… we are very different.”
In 1965, she married David Bailey, a British photographer whom she met at a Playboy shoot. The couple divorced in 1972, the same year she welcomed a daughter with Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni.
In 1980, Deneuve teamed up with Gérard Depardieu in The Last Metro, a collaboration that quickly became one of French cinema’s most celebrated pairings. It was the first time they worked together, and definitely not the last, as they would go on to make 15 films as co-stars.
Deneuve later explained that their connection came down to instinct. Neither liked to over-rehearse, they just showed up and responded to the moment.
In the early ’90s, she hit another major milestone with Indochine, which brought her an Oscar nomination, a César Award, and international acclaim when the film won Best Foreign Language Film.
In the 2000s, Deneuve continued taking on fresh roles, including the acclaimed musical drama Dancer in the Dark opposite Björk, and later Potiche, her eighth film with Gérard Depardieu.
After appearing in The Truth, she briefly paused work due to a health scare while filming Peaceful, before returning to the set the following year.
Today, at the age of 82, Catherine Deneuve is still going strong.
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