Finally, Catherine Deneuve is preparing to return to theaters on November 24 in the film In his lifetime, a feature film for which she reunited with her director friend Emmanuelle Bercot. This film is all the more expected as its shooting has been interrupted twice: the first time in November 2019 when the actress suffered an ischemic stroke, then a second time because of the coronavirus pandemic. While returning to this project rich in twists and turns, the 78-year-old star confided in motherhood, she who plays a mother accompanying her son – played by Benoît Magimel – in his fight against cancer.
“Very young, I wanted to have a child and I had the intuition that it would be difficult. I was very in love with the father of my son Christian“, she first remembered. When Catherine Deneuve gave birth to her first child on June 18, 1963, she was then 20 years old. She has been sharing the director’s life for three years. Roger vadim – older than 16 – following their meeting on the set of the film Parisiennes (in 1961). The couple may have a family, but that doesn’t mean they get married. “It was not done at all, at the time, to have a baby without being married, and moreover I was underage. But I wanted a baby! It was complicated, passionate, violent, a tragedy in my family. “
It’s with “Christian in the arms“, in “learning song lyrics at night in the country“, that the actress then shot the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a film by Jacques Demy which truly launched his career. Separated from her son’s father shortly after birth, Catherine Deneuve was later married briefly to English photographer David Bailey, before meeting Marcello Mastroianni. From this relationship was born his daughter Chiara, in 1972. There again, no need to get married to love each other: “I did not marry Chiara’s father either. I never needed the institution of marriage to love. And love remains the great adventure of my life. “