Women's Media Nation | Social, political, and cultural issues relating to women

Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Catherine Deneuve

posted by Women & Hollywood
Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 5:23pm CDT

I am facinated by Catherine Deneuve. She recently spoke with the Times of London on the release of her new film Je Veux Voir (I Want to See) in which she plays Catherine Deneuve, an actress touring war torn Lebanon in a partially ad-libbed docudrama. The film played at Cannes.

For one of the most beautiful women in the world (who has stated she has not had work done on her face) she sounds quite uninterested in being the center of attention:

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.

What’s cool is that she has always been political and supportive of women’s issues including being a part of Voix de Femmes pour la Démocratie (Voice of Women for Democracy) and as one of the signers of the 1971 Manifeste des 343 Salopes (Manifesto of the 343 Sluts), in favour of the legalisation of abortion. (OK- has anyone ever heard of the Manifesto of the 343 Sluts? I gotta read this.)

When I signed that [1971] petition, I was not officially a feminist. Yet I have always been one. I was from a family of four sisters…But I am not political in the same way as Marguerite Duras [the writer] or Simone Signoret [the actress] were. I refused to belong to a political group. But it [the abortion issue] did become political because people were going on trial, and what they had been doing was pursuing love.”

She was recently one of 8,000 signers of a petition of the sexist treatment of Segolene Royal when she ran for president:

I think many found it difficult to accept the fact that a woman woman wanted to be elected president…But then they still have difficulty admitting that a woman could direct a company, or a group of men.

Catherine Deneuve: politics, plastic surgery and her new film Je Veux Voir (The Times of London)