She is always billed as ”one of the most beautiful women in the world.” Constantly described as ”cool,” ”independent”-even ”aloof,”
”arrogant.” But there is always that ”beauty” thing that precedes her, hangs over her.
Catherine Deneuve enters the room. And the Earth does not tremble. Lightning does not strike. She is a bit shorter than expected, slim but a bit curvier, too. Her legs are sensational. Her hair is blond, but not long and flowing and blond blond. Her eyes are direct. Her look is cool.
She is beautiful.
In the next hour or so, she touches on raising children as a single parent (”It is nicer if there are two”); beauty (”I don`t complain, but maybe you see more than I do”); her new perfume (”Why not?”); aging
(”Sometimes I do not tell the truth about my feelings”); feminists (”I tell my daughter that she would not be able to even think the things she thinks today if it were not for them. But I do not like that word. It sounds like an army of women soldiers”).
She thaws.
And she is remarkably beautiful.
UP IN THE PENTHOUSE
Scene: The penthouse suite of the Park Hyatt hotel. The 44-year-old French actress, who has a 24-year-old son, Christian, by Roger Vadim, and a 15-year-old daughter, Chiara, by Marcello Mastroianni, is in town to promote her fragrance, called Deneuve. She is pressed for time before her next appointment at a TV studio. But she is doing what is correct; she is being courteous. She is prepared to answer questions she certainly has already been asked hundreds of times. Any questions-except those relating to the men in her life, specifically Vadim and Mastroianni.
She has been told that she is always portrayed in two ways: as the great beauty who makes men`s hearts throb and women wonder, or as the distant and unapproachable ice queen, described as, among other things, ”haughty.”
”Haughty?” she suddenly repeats. ”Haughty? I don`t know that word. What does it mean? I like the sound-haughty.”
She says it crisply, then gently. And it does indeed take on a different ring.
”I live in a world where you have to talk. I`m always surrounded with people and I`m always talking, you know. And then when I`m not talking, people think I`m in a bad mood. Sometimes you have to talk just to reassure people you`re all right. And I don`t like that. I don`t like to talk. Not just to talk.
”There should be no mystery if someone wants to keep a few things just for herself. I am not the only one to feel that there are two women in one-open and private.”
Deneuve often punctuates her sentences with ”you know,” though not the offensive ”ya know” that is a habit for many; instead, hers is a phrase that invites understanding. It is the same for the raised eyebrows after she`s made a particularly forthright or bold statement. Occasionally, she gives a quick sideways bite to her bottom lip; it`s just a momentary thing, like when she`s concentrating on a question. She is very composed, though she does talk with her hands, most often just her right one.
She loves silence, she says, when she is alone. ”And I like to be in quiet places with very few people, not in noisy places-unless it`s very noisy and very late at night. I go out so much for work but I like to be with people in private places.
”When I see my friends, it is not to talk about art or politics or things like that, but very personal things. The way they are, the way they feel. Things you cannot talk about in your public life.”
She has a best friend-an older Frenchwoman whom she has known for 20 years. ”We love to be together, to walk in the country, to talk.”
Yes, Deneuve nods, there is a man, a romantic interest, in her life.
(An attractive man, about her age, not a celebrity, he was here in Chicago with her, shopping for antiques during her time off, dining with her at the Greek Islands restaurant.)
But she offers nothing more than that nod, then quickly obviates further queries with, ”We are talking of friends and I do have two or three friends who are men. Platonic.” She maintains that platonic relationships are a rarity-not just for her, but for females generally. ”It is almost not a possibility to have such a friendship. An attraction begins. Most often from the man. It is difficult.”
POINT OF VIEW
Scene: A photographer has set up his lights in front of a piano against a crimson Oriental screen. Deneuve, who has been photographed by camera geniuses for some 25 years (and was married to one, David Bailey, for five years in the late `60s) has just suggested a slight change in lighting (”It is too flat”), a change in distance (”You are too close”). They are mere suggestions, of course, but they are given in a controlled tone, much as the mother superiors of long ago would have suggested, firmly and evenly, that recess is over and it is time to get on with more serious things.
She looks at the Polaroid, studies it momentarily, tears it neatly in half and then just as neatly into quarters and puts them aside. The process is repeated two, three more times before she sighs, ”Let`s do it.”
Catherine Deneuve has been in films since she was in her teens, has made nearly 60 movies (including favorites ”The Last Metro” and ”The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” which rocketed her to fame in 1964). She`s been a star since she was 21.
”But many people here do not know me as an actress. They think of me as a Frenchwoman or the symbol for Chanel.
”Chanel was my first experience with a commercial activity and it was a very positive thing. Richard Avedon, who did all the photography, was very much responsible. I was very reluctant. I didn`t feel comfortable about it. But he was very forthright; he made it very interesting and it changed many things for me.”
She dismisses her other commercials (cars: ”It didn`t work for me”;
watches: ”Very brief”) with ”it was a way that led to more freedom in what I wanted to do in films. It was money for freedom.”
In an interview about Deneuve on ”West 57th Street,” actor Burt Reynolds surmised that money might be the reason behind her association with a line of fragrance products. But during her cross-country tours visiting more than 40 cities, when one interviewer after another had asked her ”Why a perfume?”, she frequently parried, ”Why not?”
PERFUMED MYSTIQUE
”I was given the opportunity to do it. I have always worn perfume, since I was very young,” she says. ”Wearing perfume is emotional. Perfume surrounds you, in a way; it is protective.” Before her own fragrance, her favorite had been Guerlain`s ”L`Heure Bleu,” described by a professional as a stronger version of Deneuve. She worked for more than three years on testing samples, approving packaging and the like before the fragrance reached the public.
She calls her fragrance ”very open, very floral, but very subtle. Classic, but not classic.”
The phrase-”Classic, but not classic”-is appropriate for Deneuve, from her fashion choices (Yves Saint Laurent`s understated designs, for example, often teamed with enormous, interesting earrings) to her life.
She has often admitted that ”my life has not exactly been a classic one.”
Deneuve has been chosen-by popular vote-as the new face for the bust of Marianne, a sculptural personification of the republic of France that appears in public buildings such as city halls. (Before this, the face of the sculpture was that of Brigitte Bardot-chosen, however, by the sculptor, not the people.)
Deneuve has expressed both pleasure and some surprise at this honor.
”I`ve been married. I`ve had children outside of marriage. I`m not a very classic woman in that sense. My life has not been perfect. Being chosen says there is understanding that life is quite difficult for a woman to succeed in everything. It`s a social fact that there are a lot of single mothers.”
Though Deneuve rules out answering any questions about Vadim and Mastroianni, she has talked about single motherhood (”It was not my choice. I did not plan it. Children need both parents.”) and now talks freely about marriage.
”I`m really not against marriage. I was married, you know, but I`m not really for it. I don`t believe it`s an obligation, especially today. I don`t think it makes sense like it did in the 19th Century. Marriage was meant to protect women, to protect the family, but all that went out completely so I really don`t see the meaning of marriage. To me, marriage would mean something if you couldn`t get a divorce.
”Until death do us part? That`s a big lie to me, when you could be divorced three years later.”
Might she ever marry again? ”Yes, I might. Yes, I might!”
ACTING`S FACADE
Scene: She is in a small town car, being driven to her TV appointment. She gasps, ”But that is incredible!” as she sees the skeleton of a building at St. Clair and Ontario. ”How do they pull that down? I`ve never seen anything like that.”
Razing buildings is certainly not a common occurrence in France, where she has an apartment in Paris, a house in the country. Chiara is in school there. Deneuve has not been in Chicago since she and Mastroianni and Chiara were here years ago when he was filming. Deneuve`s son, Christian, is also in France, working at being an actor. In the past, she has voiced her disapproval of his desire to become an actor, though she has seen him on the stage. ”He is good, very good.”
And how does she judge herself as an actress?
”I don`t know; certainly not as you do. When you are involved in things, you do not judge. I see them afterwards and I am very critical. I can see the limits.”
She is much more outspoken in assessing herself as a mother.
She is, she says with a smile, ”a very irregular, good mother. Like a woman very involved with work would be. Sometimes, when I was younger, I would suffer feeling guilty about not being there. Not anymore. Not because my children are older; but you realize what you want to do, then what you have to do. You always have to hurt in a way, you know, because if you don`t hurt anyone, you are completely eaten by life because it means you don`t exist; you are just there to please everybody and give everybody what they want.
”And your children, they are the biggest eaters. They would eat all of you physically, mentally, your time, your feelings, your emotions-everything. Children are really monsters, and I love children-especially mine-but you have to resist that. And they know very well how to make you feel guilty, children do. Very well. It took me 15 years to realize”-there`s a pause for emphasis-”that it is important to live what you want to live.
”I tell them sometimes, `You`ll do that in your own life. This is my life. You`re part of it. But it is my life.` ”
She talks warmly of her daughter, whom she will see in just a few days.
”She is quite tall, she wears my clothes. She loves perfumes, as I do, but she tries all kinds all the time.”
A bit of reverie and then, ”I remember very much when I was 15 or 16. I want my daughter to know that a lot of things she`s thinking today she could not have thought 15 years ago. Anything that had to do with love and sex-”
she trails off. ”No way-it was something so big.”
Deneuve credits much of women`s advances to feminism and to feminists.
” `Feminist.` Such an extreme word. To be a feminist does not mean taking a position on everything. It`s an attitude toward women.
”I feel much more for women than for men because I know women much more. Even if I think the feminist movement is very extreme, I think they believe it is their role to be extreme, their role to try to go higher, to get more for women, because there is still very important discrimination for women in life, everywhere in the world, even in very open, democratic countries. So I`m very much for feminism but I cannot be part of the movement because it means to be enrolled, to do things and defend things that I don`t agree with. But I respect what they have done for women in the last 15 years.” Then she suddenly adds: ”Do you know that I took a position for abortion?”
In April of 1971, Deneuve was among Frenchwomen (including Francoise Sagan, Simone de Beauvoir, Jeanne Moreau) who signed an ad in a magazine calling for unhindered rights of abortion. During a TV interview in another city that skimmed the topic, she impetuously said, ”You know, we were called `the 100 whores,` those of us who signed. It was important that people stand up for what they believe.”
WHEN LIFE BEGINS
Scene: The local TV spot is over. Zip-zip, one, two, three. ”In France it would take three hours,” she says on her way out. But there is yet so much on her agenda. A meeting with the Marshall Field`s store personnel who will sell the fragrance, a benefit at a suburban Field`s, a dinner. The next day, an autographing session with a thousand fans at Woodfield. But now, back in the car, streetlights play across her face and she ponders a question she had been asked.
”I don`t understand, `Life does not begin at 40`?” There`s a clarification about the phrase, explaining that it is ”life begins at 40.”
But she shakes her head from side to side. ”No. Life begins at 14 or 15,”
she says very softly. ”And then it keeps going and going . . .”
But, of course, she thinks of growing older. ”I have to look at myself when I go on tour like this. But then I forget it as soon as I`m not in front of a reminder.”
Aging is a problem, she admits, ”especially for a woman who lives on a physical-appearance basis-which isn`t everything in life, you know.
”But to tell you the truth, I`m not sure that I`m always telling the truth on that subject. There are different truths depending on the day-depending on how I feel and what I am doing at the moment and if I look good or if I feel tired. It`s not that I`m lying, but certain questions deserve certain answers. Certain questions deserve the truth and others don`t. Aging is something you could answer different ways at different times of your life. I think a woman cannot answer one straight way about aging, because it is a very complex thing.
”There are so many advantages in growing older, you know. You grow bigger-that is, you grow up. But, there are so many disadvantages. It depends on your priorities, and your priorities change with the time of year, the time of day.
”The problem is more like when I`m alone. It`s always in the back of my mind, but it never becomes-not yet, at least-possessive. If it was, I could not go on appearing-always, supposedly-to be good-looking. It`s very nice to do these things, but it`s also a challenge. If the challenge becomes too much of a challenge-well, life is too short for that. So I don`t think I would go on forever.
”When you`re depressed, you feel very different. But that is not my state of mind at the moment. It has been a good trip. It has turned into a good day.” –
SNAPSHOTS OF DENEUVE Actor she`d most like to do a film with: Robert DeNiro. ”Not to know, not to be with socially, but to work with. I admire him very much.”
Favorite designer: Yves Saint Laurent, ”because he is so classic.” But she also admits that she ”loves Donna Karan,” calling her things classic clothes that are ”so womanly.”
Fashion fetish: Shoes. Loves those by Maud Frizon and Manolo Blahnik.
Favorite entertainer: David Letterman, ”intelligent, not always nice. You have to laugh all the time.”
Most beautiful woman: Marilyn Monroe. ”She was a wonderful actress. I was touched by her beauty, by the way she moved.”
On her own beauty: ”I don`t think I look bad, but I know myself and maybe I don`t think I look as good as maybe you think I look. If I look at a picture sometimes I think, `It`s nice.` . . . It is a compliment, but it can be a pressure. The right people around you relieve that pressure.”
