"The thing that interests me most is the universe of a director, to truly enter his world."
Catherine Deneuve

"What I love about her is her mystery. She is incredibly suited to roles that contain a secret, a double life. Catherine Deneuve brings ambiguity to any situation, to any story. (...) Her demeanour, her allure, her reserve enable the spectators to project whatever feelings they want to conjure onto her face. Catherine Deneuve's great fear is not being looked at, it is being discovered."
François Truffaut


BIOGRAPHY

Brought to fame by The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Palme d'Or at the Festival de Cannes in 1964, catapulted into the A-list of French film thanks to Demy, Polanski, Buñuel and Truffaut, Catherine Deneuve has ever since captivated the world of cinema. The quality of her acting has earned her two Césars, in 1981 for The Last Metro by François Truffaut and in 1992 for Indochina by Régis Wargnier.
Seventy roles played throughout the world with the greatest directors have sculpted her character without ever exhausting its mystery. The preferred actress of Jacques Demy and André Techiné, the story of her career has also been written by Léos Carax (Pola X), Arnaud Desplechin (Kings and Queen), François Ozon (8 Women), Manoel de Oliveira (I'm Going Home) or Lars von Trier for Dancer in the Dark, Palme d'Or at the Festival de Cannes in 2000.

PRINCIPLE FILMS

2004 Kings and Queen, Arnaud Desplechin
Les Temps qui changent, André Téchiné
2001 I'm Going Home, Manoel de Oliveira
1999 Dancer in the Dark, Lars Von Trier
1998 Night Wind, Philippe Garrel
1996 Thieves, André Téchiné
1993 My Favourite Season, André Téchiné
1991 Indochina, Régis Wargnier (César 1992)
1980 The Last Metro, François Truffaut (César 1981)
1973 Touche pas la femme blanche, Marco Ferreri
1970 Tristana, Luis Buñuel
1967 Belle de jour, Luis Buñuel (Venise 1967)
Mississipi Mermaid, François Truffaut
1966 The Young Girls of Rochefort, Jacques Demy
1965 Repulsion, Roman Polanski
1963 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy

On the occasion of this Acting Master Class, Gilles Jacob paid tribute to the French actress and awarded her with an honorary Palme D'or.

"In a short story entitled We love Glenda so, writes Julian Barnes in "Letters from London", Julio Cortazar describes a group of film fans who are totally devoted to the actress Glenda Jackson. Their adoration is such that they are unable to bear any of her films being less than perfect. The members of the club, therefore, buy all the available copies of the works they consider to be mediocre and, making a cut here and adding a piece there, raise them to a level of excellence that their director - declared by the group to be hopeless - was unable to achieve.
Then, however, there is talk of a new film and its subject is not to the group's satisfaction. Our fans feel crushed. Did I say crushed - more like annihilated! In order to defend their love for Glenda and her work evermore, they decide to take definitive action. Totally definitive action, if you catch my drift...
That could never happen to you, my dear Catherine, mainly because I would never allow it, and then also because, throughout your career, you have made many very good films. I wouldn't let anyone get their hands on a single frame - no frame that has you in it in any case - from Umbrellas, Repulsion, La Vie de château, or Belle de jour, or from Mississippi Mermaid, The Last Metro, Hôtel des Amériques, Drôle d'endroit pour une rencontre, or Ma saison préférée, to just mention a few. Your presence in all seems close or distant, but always sublime: I can't mention all your films for fear of sounding like a catalogue.
But there is one title that summarises them all and expresses the feelings of every man watching one of your films, and that is Je vous aime.
It's the kind of comment one can risk in public without fear of being slapped, but that one would never dare whisper in private, however much one might want.
I have just, by mentioning a few of your roles, told the history of the last thirty years of cinema, but I have not yet spoke of the way in which you so triumphantly dominate the screen, the eternal seduction of your beautiful face being caressed by the light and protected by the shadows. You are a photogenic miracle who has inspired so many directors and helped them achieve their best. Isn't falling in love with one's actress the best invention of film ever since Sternberg/Marlène?
In your case, however, beauty also shines from the heart: you have not renounced anything: not love or passion, not friendship or career, or your commitment to certain good causes. You are not simply beautiful. You are also an actress, able to play anything and therefore an excellent actress, while managing to remain totally secret. If I were to keep only one of your roles, it would not be the distant princess of Belle de jour, nor the amateur singer of Umbrellas, nor Polanski's madwoman watching potatoes germinate, nor Bunuel's one-legged woman exhibiting her chest to a dazed gardener, nor the theatre manager imagined by François Truffaut, nor the haughty bourgeoise seen here and there, - no, for me there is no contest: it would be the exasperating composition from Sauvage: a woman triumphantly at ease in her tanned skin, insolent laugh, hair falling loosely onto beautiful shoulders, joy of life in a goddess' body that no one can rival - but what about the rest, you ask? - a woman who incessantly comes out with dumb remarks, who is unbearably annoying and yet whom one simply cannot be without - her interpretation and delivery reminiscent of a French Katherine Hepburn.
For once, one of these legendary film actresses is not American, let's keep her to ourselves.
Let us enjoy this actress who knows how to seize the changing directions and faces of time passing. Knowing how to seize them is a real performance, a right royal performance.
This is why the Festival de Cannes has decided to award you this palme for your acting, an award that you deserved a hundred times over for your performance in LeLieu du crime, for example, but which the jury, surely momentarily struck by short-sightedness, mysteriously decided to waste elsewhere. But then mysteries are just that: mysterious. Accept this palme d'or, with the affectionate admiration of a humble journalist who interviewed you for first time one day when it poured with rain. It was for Les Nouvelles Littéraires and, on the pavement of rue Vineuse where you lived, my heart was in my boots. It still is today!
Thank you."