Catherine Deneuve in India – Win World Cinema DVDs

NDTV Lumiere | Movies | December 1, 2008 at 1:49 am

French icon and screen legend Catherine Deneuve was in India this week attending IFFI- Goa! NDTV Lumiere which has some of her remarkable films such as Kings And Queen, After Him, A Christmas Tale, I Want To See and Public Stands was proud to be participate at the festival and screen A Christmas Tale.

Catherine needs little introduction. The muse of designer Yves Saint-Laurent, whose face was also used as the national emblem of France, she boasts a film career that few actresses can lay claim to. She made her debut at the age of thirteen, with a role in the 1956 film Les Coll'©giennes and continued to act in films till she caught the imagination of the public with her ice-maiden roles in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) and Louis Bu'±uel’s Belle Du Jour (1967). Refusing to be typecast as a screen beauty, she continued to take up challenging roles with directors like Francois Truffaut, Jacques Demy, and earned an Academy Award nomination for her role in Indochine in 1992.
Most recently, she lent her voice to the French language adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s hit graphic novel Persepolis- also with NDTV Lumiere. Deneuve speaks fluent French, Italian, English and is semi-fluent in German.

Her role in Sirène du Mississipi, La (1969) was played by Angelina Jolie in Original Sin (2001),
Surprsingly,Catherine never performed on stage due to stage fright !
Deneuve’s only marriage was from 1965 to 1972 with photographer David Bailey. The couples divorced in 1972 and have remained friends. She has had relationships with director Roger Vadim, director Fran'§ois Truffaut,[20] actor Marcello Mastroianni, and Canal+ tycoon Pierre Lescure
When her relationship with Truffaut failed, he had a nervous breakdown. Deneuve attended his funeral in 1984 and later appeared in 8 femmes (2002) with Fanny Ardant, who was Truffaut’s partner at the time of his death and the mother of his youngest daughter.
Easily one of the finest actresses of her generation…

(For more features on world cinema, visit http://www.ndtvlumiere.com/features/index.php )

Quotes :
I’m lucky. I’m getting older with some directors who are getting older.

I don’t see any reason for marriage when there is divorce.

Directors have to push me because I never start [high] and then need to be pushed down; I have to be pushed up. Not all the time, but often.

I’m not always the nicest person to meet, because I forget very easily that I’m an actress when I’m not working.

I live very normally, I go out with my friends, we go to the movies, I queue, we go to restaurants. Then if something happens to remind me that I’m an actress then I become a little different and things become a little heavy. I like the advantages; I know it’s not right but I like being famous when it’s convenient for me and completely anonymous when it’s not.

Interestingly, people who have come to visit me on set – which I don’t like – they’re very surprised and say that I’m not the person they know. I’m not available to them, I cannot go off with them, I cannot get involved in their conversations, so they get the impression that they’re seeing someone else. I tell them, yes, I do love to see them after a shoot, but during the shoot, I am with the people I work with. They ask, how can I stand being on a set waiting for so long, and that it must be so boring. And I have to explain that to wait, for an actor, is not at all like someone who’s waiting to see the doctor. It’s not the kind of wait where you get bored. Even if I try to think about something else while I’m waiting, I am living with the film, with the scene. But I do often feel tired during the day, and I’m lucky because I can go to sleep very easily, for even 10 to 15 minutes, even if I’m in costume or under a wig, so I do.

Interviews are written by someone else – the journalist makes the decision to add or take things away and I couldn’t recognize my voice, or anything of myself in that.
What I don’t like is close-ups, unless the actor is in the camera with me. I have to feel his presence. If I have to feel the presence of the camera before my partner’s, it’s very difficult. I love to do very long and complicated scenes. I like to have this impression that we are all working together, where you can see all the technicians and everybody is really doing the same thing at the same time. With close-ups, of course you have the crew there, but most of them are just around and it doesn’t involve that many people.

The Page Turner goes into second week at PVR Cinemas in Mumbai and Banagalore –
PVR Juhu – Mumbai @ 1pm
PVR Forum Mall- Bangalore @ 6pm

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