Catherine Deneuve

Biography: life and films

With her seraphic good looks and capacity for playing roles that encompass the complete histrionic range, from burlesque comedy and bittersweet romances to full-on melodramas and serious naturalistic slices of life, it's hardly surprising that Catherine Deneuve is one of the most celebrated screen actresses of her generation. Over the past six decades, she has lent her talents to over 120 full-length films, a fair number of which have become much-loved classics of French cinema, and now in her eighth decade she still leads a busy life, as both an actress and a passionate campaigner for human rights. Deneuve has worked with some of the most highly regarded of French filmmakers - François Truffaut, Jacques Demy, André Téchiné, Alain Corneau, Arnaud Desplechin - and starred alongside countless other screen idols - Alain Delon, Yves Montand, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Omar Sharif, Burt Reynolds, Marcello Mastroianni and - of course - Gérard Depardieu, her frequent co-star.

An alluring blonde beauty who seems scarcely to have been touched by the passage of time, Catherine Deneuve is, for many people, the face of French cinema. Her charm and vitality helped to sustain France's ailing film industry in the 1980s and continue to allow French movies to reach a global audience. The epitome of Gallic chic and elegance in her youth, she has in the course of her long and prolific career become a formidable acting talent, known throughout the world for her adept portrayals of mature women coping with the travails and traumas of modern life. Along with those other peerless immortals Michèle Morgan and Jeanne Moreau, Deneuve is surely one of the most emblematic and adorable figures in French cinema.

Catherine Fabienne Dorléac - to give the actress her original name - was born in Paris on 22nd October 1943, the third of four daughters. Her father (Maurice Dorléac) and mother (Renée Deneuve) were both professional actors, although the young Catherine had no intention of following in their footsteps, unlike her older sister Françoise. She made her screen debut at the age of 12 in a small role in André Hunebelle's comedy Les Collégiennes (1956). Three years later, Françoise coerced her into playing her sister in Jacques Poitrenaud's Les Portes claquent (1960). Then, in Jacques-Gérard Cornu's L'Homme à femmes (1960), she appeared alongside Danielle Darrieux for the first time. With his ready eye for new talent, Marc Allégret put her comedic skills to good use in his sketch in Les Parisiennes (1961).

It was in 1962 that Deneuve met the first love of her life - the director Roger Vadim. Even though she was his junior by 15 years, they fell instantly in love and lived together for some years, having a son Christian in 1963. Vadim gave her a substantial role in his occupation era drama Le Vice et la vertu (1962). Two years later, the actress came to the attention of Jacques Demy, who made her an overnight global star at the age of twenty with a leading role in his hit musical romance Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964).

If Deneuve's penchant for light comedy was well-utilised by Édouard Molinaro in La Chasse à l'homme (1964) and Philippe de Broca in Un monsieur de compagnie (1964), a much darker facet of her persona reached the screen in Roman Polanski's disturbing psycho-thriller Repulsion (1965), in which she was frighteningly convincing as a homicidal schizophrenic. It was around this time that she was living in London, married to the British photographer David Bailey (the couple separated after just two years).

Agnès Varda then cast Deneuve in one of her most unusual films, Les Créatures (1966), a sci-fi romance that was ill-received at the time and partnered her for the first time with another stalwart of French cinema, Michel Piccoli. The latter accompanied the actress on some Sadean flights of fancy in Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour (1967), which saw her playing an unhappily married woman from a bourgeois milieu who takes up prostitution as a hobby. This success was followed by another, Michel Deville's lavish period romp Benjamin ou les Mémoires d'un puceau (1967), again with Piccoli. The duo teamed up again not long afterwards in Alain Cavalier's romantic drama La Chamade (1968), a skilful adaptation of a Françoise Sagan novel.

1967 proved to be an annus horribilis for the rising star. In June of that year, her 25-year-old sister Françoise Dorléac was killed in a road accident just as her career was about to take off in a big way. Three months prior to this had seen the release of Jacques Demy's second musical extravaganza Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), in which Dorléac and Deneuve had appeared on screen together for the last time, as twin sisters. The sudden loss of a sibling whom she idolised came as a terrible blow to Deneuve, and it was only by committing herself body and soul to her work that she was able to surmount this personal calamity.

By now, still in her early twenties, Catherine Deneuve was one of France's most prominent film stars, so who better to partner another icon-in-the-making, Jean-Paul Belmondo, in François Truffaut's bleak romantic thriller La Sirène du Mississipi (1968)? Despite the stellar casting, the film was a catastrophic failure, although neither Deneuve nor Truffaut seemed to care as they were now deeply in love. Their affair lasted only a few years, ending in 1971 when Deneuve suddenly broke off the relationship.

The actress made her Hollywood debut in Terence Young's slick period romance Mayerling (1968), partnered with Omar Sharif. The film was a worldwide hit, unlike the more modest comedy that came after it, The April Fools (1970), which offered the unlikely pairing of Deneuve with Jack Lemmon. Although Deneuve's first collaboration with Buñuel had not been an entirely agreeable one (owing to the fact that the producers had prevented her from communicating directly with the director), she had a ball on their next film, Tristana (1970), which she considers one of her favourites.

After this came Jacques Demy's musical fantasy Peau d'âne (1970), another box office triumph, and Nadine Trintignant's Ça n'arrive qu'aux autres (1971), the film on which she met and fell in love with her co-star, Italian heartthrob Marcello Mastroianni. The couple lived together for some years and had a daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, who would become a prominent actress. They subsequently starred together on two films by Marco Ferreri - Liza (1972) and Touche pas à la femme blanche! (1974) - and Jacques Demy's off-beat comedy L'Événement le plus important depuis que l'homme a marché sur la Lune (1972). Deneuve's cool ice-maiden persona made her the ideal foil for Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville's swansong thriller Un flic (1971); the duo would team up again a decade later in a more conventional but far less memorable thriller Le Choc (1982).

The 1970s was an incredibly prolific decade for Deneuve, who divided her time fairly evenly between light comedies and straight dramas. There were a few notable flops - such as Juan Luis Buñuel's La Femme aux bottes rouges (1974) and László Szabo's Zig-Zig (1974) - but these were amply outnumbered by a slew of box office and critical successes. One of her biggest hits in this decade was Jean-Paul Rappeneau's feisty comedy Le Sauvage (1975), which paired her off with Yves Montand and earned her her first César nomination, in 1976.

Deneuve's international standing was further boosted by two noteworthy Italian offerings - Mauro Bolognini's Fatti di gente perbène (1974) and Dino Risi's Anima persa (1977) - and her next American film, Robert Aldrich's Hustle (1975), in which she starred with Burt Reynolds. She then teamed up with Gene Hackman for Dick Richards' March or Die (1977), although this left her with some bad memories and a deep reluctance to return to Hollywood. Her next English language film would be Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983), in which she played a vampire alongside David Bowie.

Before the decade was out, Deneuve got to work with one of France's most prolific filmmakers, Claude Lelouch, on two very different films - Si c'était à refaire (1976) and À nous deux (1979) - and played a female version of Sam Spade in Hugo Santiago's curiosity piece Écoute voir (1978). She was handsomely coupled with Jean-Louis Trintignant on Gérard Pirès's L'Agression (1974) and Christian de Chalonge's L'Argent des autres (1978), and once again demonstrated her comic verve, assisted by Jean Rochefort, in Yves Robert's Courage fuyons (1979), another one of her personal favourites.

The 1980s got off to a cracking start with two films that marked the beginning of her association with an actor of comparable profile and significance, Gérard Depardieu - Claude Berri's Je vous aime (1980) and François Truffaut's Le Dernier métro (1980). A major commercial and critical success, the latter film won Deneuve her first Best Actress César. As the decade progressed, Deneuve and Depardieu became French cinema's most bankable stars, both helping to raise the profile of French movies abroad at a time when cinema audiences at home were in significant decline. Director Alain Corneau reunited them on his brutal thriller Le Choix des armes (1981) and lavish legionnaire melodrama Fort Saganne (1984), but their fans had to wait until François Dupeyron's Drôle d'endroit pour une rencontre (1988) for their next on-screen romance.

Curiously, it was in the early 1980s, just at the time when French cinema was most in need of her talents, that Catherine Deneuve began to become disillusioned with filmmaking. Acting was beginning to lose its appeal and she was more reoccupied with her human rights concerns, in particular her opposition to the death penalty in France and other countries. In 1985, she founded her own company, Deneuve SA, which offered a line of exclusive luxury goods and publicity for companies such as Saint Laurent and L'Oréal. That same year, she attracted a fair amount of derision when she allowed her face to be used for a modern sculpture of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic.

Deneuve's first collaboration with the up-and-coming auteur filmmaker André Téchiné, Hôtel des Amériques (1981), proved to be a disappointing flop, although they would go on to make some notable films together, including Le Lieu du crime (1986), Ma saison préférée (1993), Les Voleurs (1996) and Les Temps qui changent (2005). Far greater success came her way when she took the lead in Régis Wargnier's epic period romance Indochine (1992), an international hit which won her her second Best Actress César and an Oscar nomination. Her committed portrayal of an alcoholic businesswoman in Nicole Garcia's Place Vendôme then earned her the Volpi Cup at the 1998 Venice Film Festival. The decade concluded with strong performances in impressive auteur pieces such as Leos Carax's Pola X (1999), Philippe Garrel's Le Vent de la nuit (1999) and Raoul Ruiz's Le Temps retrouvé (1999).

The 2000s began with a prominent supporting role in Lars von Trier's grimly realist drama Dancer in the Dark (2000). François Ozon then gave her a tailor-made musical number in his kitsch comedy whodunit 8 femmes (2002), which won a Silver Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival for the actress and her seven female co-stars. Deneuve was so taken with Ozon that, before the decade was out, she gladly agreed to star in another O.T.T. comedy for him, Potiche (2010), partnered with Gérard Depardieu for the eighth time.

Whilst film awards are not always a reliable indicator of true merit, it is interesting to note that of the 14 César nominations Catherine Deneuve has received in the course of her sixty-year plus career, five (over a third) of these have come her way within the last decade. This is partly a reflection of the fact that the actress is now more preoccupied with the kind of film that is likely to find favour with critics (serious dramas by talented auteurs) but it must surely also point to her growing maturity as a performer and her willingness to embrace more challenging and interesting roles.

In low-key films such as Tonie Marshall's Au plus près du paradis (2002), Gaël Morel's Après lui (2007), Julie Lopes-Curval's Mères et filles (2009) and Emmanuelle Bercot's Elle s'en va (2013), Deneuve has scarcely a trace of her erstwhile glamorous insouciant persona and habitually turns in character portrayals of exquisite depth and subtlety. Working with acclaimed auteur Arnaud Desplechin, she is at her best - evidenced by her remarkable performances in Rois et reine (2004) and Un conte de Noël (2008).

Like Depardieu, Deneuve has suffered from some bad press in recent years (much has been made of her reservations over same sex marriages and her overt support for a Roman Polanski tainted by teen rape allegations), but her mainstream appeal continues unabated. Audiences loved her comic turns in Valérie Lemercier's Palais Royal (2005) and Laurent Tirard's Astérix et Obélix: Au service de sa Majesté (2012), although there's no denying that it is the auteur arena where she appears to be most at home now. Paul Vecchiali's Le Cancre (2016), Martin Provost's Sage femme (2017) and André Téchiné's L'Adieu à la nuit (2019) reveal a confident and subtle actress at the top of her game, and long may she continue in this vein, picking over the uncomfortable truths about the human condition that only the most dedicated and talented of artists can help us to make sense of.

Filmography

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