Catherine Deneuve On Style, Politics And The Paris Attacks

On finding it difficult to work with American directors: “It is not my culture. I know that I am a foreigner. It would not be my way of saying something if it is in a different language. Also, I suppose it has more to do with the fact they are American. Culturally, it’s very far from us, very far.”

On Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National party, losing the regional elections: “Well, Marine Le Pen didn’t win but she did not lose if you look at the numbers. This is the worrying thing, you know? If the left had not called on the right to vote Republican, they wouldn’t have got through. It’s very disconcerting.”

On the day of the Paris attacks: “[I realized] something serious must have happened, as I have never seen so many fire trucks...Obviously I didn’t get any sleep that night and contrary to habit I got up very early. I never wake up early and I went out to the terrace of a cafe on rue de Rennes. I had to be out and I had to be there, I wanted to be, but I felt oppressed like a lot of people. All of a sudden you realize it could happen anywhere, to anyone, simply because someone decides to blow themselves up.”

On women being able to vote in Saudi Arabia: “It’s an evolution that is giving them a lot of fulfilment...It’s a beginning. It’s an evolution for women that is growing and I don’t think anything can stop them now.”

On legalised abortion: “I can’t believe I lived through that period when it was illegal… young girls don’t realize, but I’ve lived through that, I was part of the group of women who signed the petition to say we’d had an abortion when it was forbidden, and that was a big scandal.”

On her Catholic education: “I was raised in a Catholic school for a long time and it made things quite heavy for me. So when I left my parents, very young, to live with a man, when I had my children, I did not baptize them. My memory of (Catholic school) is not that good… The feeling of guilt is very, very heavy, still today. It’s very heavy. I dislike the guilt.”

On Saint Laurent: “When Saint Laurent was a couture designer, I wore a lot of his suits and in that sense I was spoilt. Getting dressed didn’t take much thought. I would simply wear YSL and it was total luxury.”

On her favorite piece of clothing, a Saint Laurent black coat: “He made me a piece that I absolutely love because it is so timeless… Black wool crêpe, with very thin black feathers, with just a little thing of white once in a while. And when I see this cape...it always reminds me.”

To see the full interview with Catherine Deneuve, buy the latest issue of PORTER, on sale globally on Friday February 5. Also available as a digital edition or go to https://portersubscription.net-a-porter.com/?prom=PTRFN

Photography by Nan Goldin, courtesy PORTER magazine.