Yes, I showed you can be beautiful and be a lesbian

"Being an actress is a very physical thing.
If I didn't look the way I looked, I would never have started in films."

Catherine Deneuve is (unbelievably) 64 years old!

This iconic actress, one of the best known, most admired, French people in the world and recently included by an American film magazine among the 100 most important cinema figures of all time, made her first movie at the age of 13 in 1957 - and half a century later she is still a top cinema and fashion diva.

Mainly appearing in films in her native French, Catherine's career hit the heights in the 1964 classic Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, and she went on to work with the likes of Roman Polanski (in Repulsion), Luis Bunuel (in Belle du Jour), Roger Vadim and Marcello Mastroianni (with both of whom she had affairs, and bore children). She also was (briefly) married to the king of 60s cool, photographer David Bailey.

Catherine won many accolades in her long career, including an Oscar nomination for 1990's Indochine; she was the face of the symbol of France "La Marianne" throughout the 80s; and for decades was an influential fashion icon - for Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel No.5 perfume, L'Oreal, MAC and Luis Vuitton, among others.

She finally broke into the mainstream of Hollywood when she starred alongside Susan Sarandon and David Bowie in The Hunger in 1982, in which her role as a seductive lesbian vampiress brought her a cult and gay and lesbian following that endures to this day.

Above all, Catherine Deneuve is still regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world. And long may she remain a shining example of elegance in a dull world!

"Suddenly, there was a woman looking like a woman and liking women.
Yes, I showed you can be beautiful and be a lesbian. Maybe I did that."
- Catherine Deneuve