Deneuve, Catherine (1943– )

French actor. Graceful and elegant, she is one of the most famous French stars. Her breakthrough came with Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg/Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964); since then she has worked with a number of leading film-makers, including Luis Buñuel, Roman Polanski, and François Truffaut.

She began acting in films as a teenager, often with her sister Françoise Dorléac (1942–1967). Deneuve's other films include Repulsion (1965), Belle de jour (1967), Tristana (1970), Le Dernier Métro/The Last Metro (1980), The Hunger (1983), Indochine (1992), Ma saison préférée (1993), A Hundred and One Nights (1995), Time Regained (1999), and Dancer in the Dark (2000).