NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Entertainment

Cinema's grande dame: Catherine Deneuve

By Helen Barlow
NZ Herald·
1 Jul, 2011 05:30 PM7 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

At 67, French screen legend Catherine Deneuve embodies the essence of growing old gracefully. Helen Barlow surveys the life and loves of the star and talks to her about her new film, a feminist comedy.

Catherine Deneuve enters Francois Ozon's new film, Potiche, jogging, in tracksuit. It is, admittedly, an impeccable, blood-red designer tracksuit and she looks like she's just left the hairdresser's salon. But a tracksuit? On one of the world's most enduringly glamorous women?

"That's my favourite costume in film," says the 67-year-old
French screen legend, belying her role as the muse of her late dear friend, Yves Saint Laurent.

"People always think when you wear couture clothes it's only evening dresses, but I've been involved with Saint Laurent for 35 years so I have many casual things.

"It's funny because people say they can't imagine me in blue jeans on the weekend. I say, 'Why not?'."

Certainly, movie directors like to play with Deneuve's glamorous image, and to her credit, she has always been up for any challenge. Roman Polanski cast her as a woman well beyond the verge of a nervous breakdown in 1965's Repulsion and two years later, in Spanish maestro Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour, she played a haut-bourgeois Parisienne who seeks sexual gratification by working in a brothel.

She once wrote to the provocative Dane, Lars von Trier, expressing interest in working with him. In response, he cast her as a factory worker alongside Bjork in 2000's Dancer in the Dark, which went on to win the best film and best actress prize (for Bjork) in Cannes.

Now in Potiche, a satirical farce on big business and workers' rights, Francois Ozon has her in curlers as Suzanne Pujol, a woman controlled by her industrialist husband (Luchini) until he becomes sick and she must take over the family umbrella factory.

She does so with great aplomb, by adopting a more personal approach, and emerges from the experience a different, emancipated woman.

She even wards off the advances of her former lover, communist and trade unionist, played by Depardieu.

The film, whose title is untranslatable - it is a word for a pretty but useless small vase and is loosely equivalent to the English expression "trophy wife" - adapts a hit French play, first produced in 1980 but set in the 70s. It starred the late Jacqueline Maillan, a household name in France, and director Ozon says that Maillan put her stamp on the role to the extent that it was hard to imagine anyone else playing the part.

"It took me some time to think that Catherine could play the part because she is exactly the opposite of Jacqueline, whose extravagant way of acting is very dated now. Catherine is different: she doesn't want to be superior to her character.

"She was the first one I asked and I she had said no, I would simply not have done the film. I mean, can you imagine anyone else in the part?

"In America maybe Meryl Streep, in England Helen Mirren - but nobody else in France could have done it."

With the playwright's blessing, Ozon wrote a third act, which winked at the campaign of Segolene Royal, the first woman to run for president. "She didn't win," he says, "but in the film Suzanne wins: that is the power of cinema."

But he resisted the temptation to update the setting.

"Doing some research about the 70s and the political context I realised the situation in the play is very relevant today particularly in France. Women are not paid the same, the pensions are lower for women than men. Things have changed [but] there are still a lot of fights for women.

"I had a feeling that it was possible to speak of today and leave the story in the 70s and it gave me an opportunity to keep the comic element; if it was set today it might need to be very dramatic."

Deneuve, for her part, stops short of saying that the film suggests the world would be better if women took over.

"Oh, I don't see why it would be better, but I think it would be better if there were more women in public life with a bigger responsibility, because it's still not very fair the amount of women who are there."

The third of four daughters born to actors Maurice Dorleac and Renee Deneuve, Catherine took her mother's name to differentiate herself from her elder actress sister, Francoise. She left home at 17 and by 19 had given birth to the first of her two children, Christian. The father was director Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot's ex, and a man twice her age - it was he who convinced her to dye her naturally brown hair to the blonde with which she is instantly identifiable.

She and Vadim were separated within a month of Christian's birth and later she married British photographer David Bailey, who described their seven years together as "like trying to manage a Maserati when you're used to a Ford".

For Deneuve, one marriage was enough, although she had a relationship with the great Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, with whom she co-starred in four films. The couple had a daughter Chiara Mastroianni and although they split in 1975 they remained close: she was at his bedside when he died of pancreatic cancer in 1996. Other famous lovers have included Francois Truffaut and Clint Eastwood.

"I didn't exactly decide to have children outside of marriage," she says. "It just happened that way. I could have been living with the father of my child forever, but it didn't happen. You never know how long a relationship is going to last and you hope it's going to work, but I never think in terms of eternity. Today nothing seems to work for a long time in relationships. People get divorced so easily."

The 60s were something of a whirlwind for Deneuve as she ascended to early stardom, though she admits that she was a little naive and unable to comprehend the scale of her success. In the 70s she experienced a career slump, which ended with her appearing in 1980's The Last Metro, directed by Truffaut, who had a decade earlier reportedly declared he wanted to kill himself after she'd rejected him. Her greatest recognition came in 1992's Indochine, where she earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a 1930s rubber plantation owner in French Indochina (Vietnam).

She returned to the limelight a decade later in 8 Women, also by Ozon, an odd mixture of musical comedy and murder mystery, which gathered eight of France's top actresses including Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant and Emmanuelle Beart.

Perhaps unsurprisingly with so many divas in one place, the shoot was fraught - Ozon says Deneuve in particular is the kind of actress who devotes herself entirely to her director and sharing him with other stars didn't work well.

Potiche marks the seventh time that Deneuve has shared screen time with Gerard Depardieu and seeing them dance together is quite something. Depardieu famously said of the actress that "she is the man I would have liked to have been", which presumably counts as a compliment.

Ozon says they made a perfect team. "It was dream to have them together. He loves Catherine, and there is a kind of magical chemistry between them. They are the sort of royal couple of French cinema. Always she's the bourgeois and he's the working-class man. That's how they dance together."

Additional reporting by Peter Calder

Lowdown
Who:
Catherine Deneuve
What: Potiche, directed by Francois Ozon
When: Opens at cinemas Thursday

- TimeOut

Discover more

Entertainment

Robert Redford: How the matinee idol became a Hollywood movie maverick

24 Jun 07:00 PM
Entertainment

Kiwi to direct Twilight follow-up film

29 Jun 05:30 PM
Entertainment

Movie Review: Transformers III: Dark Of The Moon

30 Jun 08:00 PM
Travel

Travel book: <i>The Discovery of France</i>

03 Jul 05:00 PM
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save

    Share this article

Latest from Entertainment

Entertainment

Star’s final posts to daughter before death

05 Jul 06:46 AM
Entertainment

'Absolutely insane': Lorde's new album hits number 1 on both sides of globe

05 Jul 06:12 AM
Premium
Entertainment

Marlee Matlin on Hollywood, healing and stories still untold

05 Jul 06:00 AM

Sponsored: Get your kids involved in your reno

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Entertainment

Star’s final posts to daughter before death

Star’s final posts to daughter before death

05 Jul 06:46 AM

His daughter Madison, 25, shared a close bond with the Australian actor on Instagram.

'Absolutely insane': Lorde's new album hits number 1 on both sides of globe

'Absolutely insane': Lorde's new album hits number 1 on both sides of globe

05 Jul 06:12 AM
Premium
Marlee Matlin on Hollywood, healing and stories still untold

Marlee Matlin on Hollywood, healing and stories still untold

05 Jul 06:00 AM
Cause of death revealed as Julian McMahon, 56, dies after private battle

Cause of death revealed as Julian McMahon, 56, dies after private battle

05 Jul 04:42 AM
Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper
sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP