Icons: Catherine Redux

She drinks bourbon. She smokes cigarettes. She wears fur. She is 66 today. The photo above is from this year. Asked if she has had "work" done on her face, she chuckled and said she hadn't the time. Then refered the questioner to her 98 year old mother's face. With a shrug, "It's genetic." I beg to differ. It is much more than that. My original "Icons" post celebrating her 65th birthday is here.

"It was Truffaut who said she had to be unlocked; that there was in her "something that was ready to give but also refused to unbutton". And it is evident today as she sits in the corner of the sofa, a marriage of passion and primness - the polo neck, brooch, skirt that falls at a tasteful point above the knee, counterbalanced by the throaty laugh, and the famous Deneuve froideur..."

Asked about why she has never accepted a role on the stage...

“To be the centre of attraction is something I have a lot of problems with. The idea of being on a stage with people looking only at me terrifies me. On a film set it is very different. Everyone there, perhaps 25 or 30 people, they are all working, all involved in whatever they are doing. Whereas in the theatre you rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and then you present this thing which is completely finished, and in front of you.” She tails off here and her face quails, as if she is glimpsing a vista of plush theatrical stalls with people in them, and finding it too much to bear. Then she smiles at herself, seeming to agree that it’s a rum business. As the smiles increase, something strange happens to her features. The strangeness is that there is nothing strange in their animation. The froideur, the hauteur (sometimes only French words do the trick) that you see in her housewife prostitute of Belle de Jour or her glacial psycho of Repulsion are gone. Suddenly it’s hard to imagine how they ever occupied the space."

From:

Nicholas Katz, The Times Online, 9/25/09

Laura Barton, of The Guardian, January 2009.

If any lady in the world of the cinema deserves the label of "icon", it is Catherine Deneuve. Joyeux anniversaire.