FROM THE VAULT: CATHERINE DENEUVE

FRANCE'S MUSE MUSES ABOUT MOTHERHOOD, STARDOM, AND HER MANY DIRECTORS

(Above: Deneuve photographed by Peter Lindbergh)

I thought it would be appropriate to reach back into my vault of taped interviews to transcribe a bit of this one I did with Catherine Deneuve as my first column from Paris as I settle in to spend the next couple of months here. There is something poetic about being here at my desk in my writer’s garret in the Eighth Arrondissement and listening to her voice in my iPods drift into my Parisian present from so long ago when I was Executive Editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview and met her in her suite at the Plaza Athénée in New York City for coffee and conversation. I can’t even recall why she was in town and what she was publicizing - probably a perfume, maybe her own - but I do remember she had been shopping that morning in some antique stores around the hotel’s Upper East Side neighborhood and had bought a large wooden antique clock which almost looked as if it could have been a granddaughter of a grander grandfather one, a toddler, burnished more than born, yet to learn to tick, to tock since it was not working in its wondrous stillness. She led me to its stalled face to inspect it and marvel at its beauty but I marveled at hers instead as she knew how to catch the light streaming into the suite at that very moment, the inspection a seeming excuse to move into it at just the right angle so I could momentarily ogle her as she pretended to stare at another face, that of stopped time. I have often thought of that moment in the decades since when I have seen her in the press or on television or in her films or in her new ads for Cartier with Rami Malek or on the front rows of fashion shows here in Paris, her own face unable to stall time but more deeply and differently beautiful in the direly dignified way that some woman wear their age, burnished more than borne, as a dare to time itself as it stares back at them in astonishment and allows them passage through it toward more than their public which awaits them.

This is an excerpt of a conversation that took place 36 years ago.

KEVIN SESSUMS: Let’s start out talking about your childhood. What is the favorite memory and the most unfavorite from that time in your life?

CATHERINE DENEUVE: My favorite concerns my mother when she came back … ah … my mother got very ill with tuberculosis when I was quite young.  She had to go to the mountains for a year.  I suppose my favorite memory is when she came back from the mountains because we really thought it was terrible.  They didn’t manage very well to prepare us for my mother’s departure.   It was done at night.  There was lots of hiding.  So that was my worst remember,  my saddest.

So the most unfavorite, the worst is her going to the mountains but the favorite, the best is her coming back?

Yes. The worst because they didn’t prepare us, my sisters and me.  My mother didn’t say anything.   She just said she was going away for the night.  But I saw everybody in the corridor crying.  And I saw the luggage downstairs waiting by the car.  And I shouted.  I screamed.  It is something I will never forget. But she got cured by going to the snow, going to the mountains.  She had to be there for a year. We did go to see her once in the mountains on Easter, my sisters and I.   I was seven.

Are you afraid of being abandoned now?  Of being left? 

I am afraid of being surprised.  So I protect myself.  I do avoid certain things and avoiding is a way of losing …

Spontaneity?

No, no, no. But trying to avoid situations in which I could be hurt, you know, is protecting yourself in way that also protects you from the  possibility of surprises, or good surprises.  But I have some others. I am a quite open person so I have other opportunities. I meet people. But I do protect myself in an emotional field, that’s true.

You have two children. A son with Roger Vadim and a daughter with Marcello Mastroianni. How has your own motherhood changed you?

Well, that is an interesting question - confirming what I thought of children. I am very close to my children. When they say things - well, not that I would act like my son because I am a woman and we are very close and very much alike - but the way we move in the world is still different. But I realize how much of a child I still am by saying things and talking with them and feeling the same way. Or guessing why they are the way they are. I talk a lot to my children and I realize - I think this is true for a lot of people - that you are still the child you were sometimes. And I think it is very important not to try to get away from too much of it.

You say you talk to them. Do you also listen to them?

Yes. Yes. When I say I talk, I don’t mean that I teach. We like to talk. Well, I like talking to them. I do listen to them. Yes: I listen.

Does becoming a grandmother frighten you in that it signifies that you are getting older?

No. Not at all. I don’t know if I’ll be happy about it or not. (Laughing) That depends on the wife of my son and the husband of my daughter. I do not want my son to become a father by surprise. It is difficult for a man to become a father if he hadn’t decided to. Your life is changed forever when you become a mother or a father. You don’t know that before - how much it is going to change.

You realize you’re not the center of your own universe anymore.

Absolutely. But it is part of being human. You are a link and you are supposed to link to someone else. I do accept the fatality of life. I am from a family of several children so it’s quite natural to me. I understand - no, I don’t understand, I respect - some women who don’t want to have children. But to me there is something not right. No, I don’t mean “not right.” Right is not the word - right or wrong. It just there is something strange to me about not wanting children.

Did having your children with each of those men, deepen your love for them or complicate it because it divided it between them and a new person in the equation even thought it was child?

I was so young when I had my son with Vadim, that it was a way to hold something tighter, you know, not with him but to hold something that would be part of him, to have something from him. It is true that when you want to have a child with a man you want something of him. You want a. part of him - which is completely wrong. (Laughing). But I was very young. ‘[She was only 19 when she had her first child.] The second time with Mastroianni I just accepted to have a child because he wanted so much to have a child. So I did agree and just had my daughter like that. She was just born like that. She blossomed like a flower and she was born very easily. It was very .. ah .. very … simple. Her name is Chiara which means “clear.” My son is Christian. I wanted short names for my children so they couldn’t be distorted because I hate distortion of names. You know?

Your own parents were both actors. Why did you choose your mother’s family name as your professional name instead of your father’s which is Dorléac?

I didn’t choose. My sister, Françoise, kept her name. Otherwise, I would have kept my name. [Deneuve’s sister was an actress at the beginning of her own brilliant career when she was killed in a car accident at the age of 25 in 1967.] That was her choice. She was older and started before me.

It’s odd that we’ve begun our conversation with talk of motherhood. People think of you as a glamorous movie star, not as a mother.

People who don’t know me, yes. Only my friends. But I think it’s right like that. It’s not that I want to separate things because everything mixed up together in a way is not a bad thing. But it doesn’t have to become public why you do this and why you do that. My life is very put together by living and having children and working. But I try not to mix things publicly. But it is true, I am very much at my essence a mother.

Do you think that is why they chose you to be honored as the face of the French Republic when they modeled the statue of Marianne on yours?

Well such an honor - to be representative of a country - could not have happened in America because in America the image I have is of a sophisticated French woman which I am sometimes. It’s true. But in France people know me more for being an actress and knowing the kind of life I have had and a lot of women in France have had that kind of life.

Being on that statue did make you even more iconic.

Yes, it did change a little. I realized that in the street more than anything. I belong more to the people - I mean, when I’m out.

I was just in Paris and I long to live there at some point in my life.

It’s nice, huh?

More than nice. The language is a problem for me alas. In fact, I only really know you with subtitles. I keep expecting to see them scrolling under your face here in the room.

(We laugh)

One of the things I loved about Parisians is that they are passionate people who love to argue with a kind of higher tone to the arguments. They argue about art and almost make it political.

Yes. We are very Latin. Very Latin. Privately I speak out politically but publicly I’m very low profile. I do speak out for humanitarian reasons amnesty and legal abortion. Things like that. But politically about a person, no.

It is important that someone who places so much importance in motherhood also stands up for the rights of women to have legal abortion.

It was a big deal at the time. I signed a petition - a letter - with 100 other women along with Marguerite Duras. They called us “The Hundred Whores.” (Laughs)

But your image onscreen is that of the Madonna and whore.

Uh-huh. Yes. That has a lot of do with Buñuel’s film, Belle du Jour, that said there are two women in you. And I do agree. But not only in the woman. There are two men in the man. There are two men in you, Kevin.

You do know me. Another film you made with Buñuel, Tristana, was on television here in New York last night.

(Gasps with delight). Really? I didn’t know. I love Tristana. It is one of my favorite films.

Why?

Because of the story. It’s so simple and so classical and a story that is forever. It is one of his most interesting films, the way it deals with the relationship between love and death. And life.

You have worked with such great - even legendary - directors.

I have been very lucky.

Buñuel. Truffaut. Polanski. Vadim. Chabrol. Demy. Varda. Lelouch. Téchiné. I am sure you learned from each of them. But what did they learn from you?

I don’t know if they would have learned something but I think when you’ve had a good experience with a director it opens them up as much as it does you. Many directors know a lot, but those who know the most are the ones who want to know more - especially about the way to behave with an actress. Because it is very difficult. And a lot of directors really don’t know how to behave with actors really. I’m surprised to see the lack of psychology of some directors. Actually in France it’s not too bad. But I am very surprised at the lack of psychology of some directors to demand what they need from actors. So if my directors have learned something from me it is how better to deal psychologically with actresses and to have that kind of artistic relationship with them.

I went back a read an old Interview from 1976 when you were on its cover and you had gone out to eat at Windows on the World with Andy and photographer Ara Gallant and a few others. In that recorded conversation you said that talent had nothing to do with being a movie actress - or movie star.

That’s true.

What does it have to do with then?

Charisma. Something else. Something that happens onscreen. I know too many talented people who don’t make it - really talented people - who don’t make it as movie stars to know that it is not the talent that shows up onscreen that people like. It’s something else. I don’t mean it’s something more. But it is something else. For a woman especially, it has to do with a certain relation with the camera and the lights and the way it reflect on the skin. Some beautiful faces get distorted completely when they start speaking - so it’s finished. It kills it. But it’s true too that it is very unfair.

Speaking of beauty, has yours been a curse or a blessing in your life?

What’s a curse?

A bad thing.

A blessing. A blessing. Without it, I wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t be here.

You have lent your image to commercial endeavors - most famously for Chanel. I guess you have no qualms about trading in your artistry for commercial purposes.

I’ve turned down a lot of propositions. I think as an actress you must accept those things that do not have too much to do with reality. I think it has to lead to the field you are in like beauty or perfume or jewelry.

Let’s circle back to your mother leaving you for that year in the mountains. We didn’t talk about your father during that time.

My father was incredible then. He was incredible. He would get up very early and prepare everything for us. The breakfast. He would comb our hair. My sisters and me. We had long hair. Four girls, huh?

That’s such a beautiful image.

He would prepare everything so it would last all-day time. He would come back at night. My father was unbelievable! He never put us away and we were four girls. We were 4, 7, 8 1/2, and 13. Can you imagine girls of that age for a man who had never done that before. (She gasps and I remember her having tears in her eyes.) I will never forget that period of my childhood and my father preparing everything for us. He was incredible. He was much more of a mother than a father when that is what we needed. (She now laughs wiping away a tear.)

Maybe he needed it too. Maybe it got him in touch with parts of himself he needed to know as well.

You see, my father married my mother quite late - well, not late, but late for him. He was 40, his late 40s. He was absolutely madly in love with all of us. And he only liked girls so he always said he was very happy to have only women at home. He was a very happy man, huh? A very happy man. He was absolutely crazy about us.

Could he be strict? Or were you spoiled?

No, he was not strict. Everyone said we were spoiled. But we were just loved. (Gasped again, this time with deep emotion.). We were so deeply loved by my father. Men are not so physical with children. But my father was incredible. And it was the same thing with his grandchildren. He liked the girls much more than the boys. Because the boys after 4 were talking too loud. He was very physical with the little children - affectionate. He was just incredible.

Truffaut said he created the role for you in The Last Metro - one of my favorite films - to give you a “responsible woman” role because you had always been the Madonna or whore. Do you think of yourself as a responsible woman?

Yes. My definition of being “responsible” is that I can play with everything with pleasure and good humor. But if you give me something to do with the responsibility I will manage. I have been in charge since quite young because I had my son quite young. But I play like children. When I play, I play serious.

There is a responsibility in being a huge star like you are when you sign onto a film because it becomes “a Catherine Deneuve film” and you are assigned more roles really than you have regarding a film’s success or failure. Have you ever served as the real producer of a film?

Yes. [It was 1975’s Zig-Zig.] And I did not like it because it changes the relationship with the director with an actress producing a film. It is a bad relation. I don’t like the relation of strength, you know. But I didn’t have anymore choice. It was difficult. I think it is difficult for an actress to be in charge of a production. It spoils a little bit the game. To act you have to be free to talk loud if you have to. But if you’re the producer it’s another song and I don’t like the tune.

What are your passions?

Life itself. I am a very passionate person. My passions are what I am doing at the time I am doing things. I love going to movies. I’m still a great filmgoer. I don’t like to go to private screenings. I prefer public cinemas. And my other passion goes to plants and gardens, you know. I love nature, yes.

You are very maternal and nurturing, even with nature.

(Laughs) I’m very Italian, huh. My grandmother was Italian.

What are your plans for the second part of your life?

It’s funny you should say that because I was just thinking about it. This morning I said my age on television. I admitted that I was 43. [Deneuve is now 79.] I was shocked at first I said it, but then I didn’t mind. Afterwards in the car coming back here to the hotel, I said to myself, “I’m 43? Yes, I’m 43!” To me it doesn’t feel much different than being 40 or 35, to tell you the truth. I don’t feel any different. So to answer your question, I don’t think the second part of my life has arrived yet. I don’t think it is a question of age. It is a question of mentality. But it is true that I am not very much anxious to get old. I still think there are things I haven’t done. Don’t ask me what. I don’t know. Maybe go back to the Seychelles. (Laughs) I don’t know. I am still on the move. I haven’t settled. Maybe when I settle, I will have the second half of my moon. I don’t know. Maybe I will be taken by surprise.

Finally.

Finally. Yes.

This has been a rather good surprise itself, spending time with you.

It has been lovely to see you, Kevin.

Lovely to see you too, Catherine.