French cinema legend Catherine Deneuve smiles as she walks past the press conference room of the Venice International Film Festival on Wednesday.
Deneuve is being honored with the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement in Venice this year.
Awarding him this year’s honor, Venetian artistic director Alberto Barbera breaks down the long list of acclaimed creatives Deneuve has worked with, and directors Roger Vadim, Jacques Demi, Luis Buuel, François Truffaut and Roman Polanski to Marcelo Mastroianni. Gerard Depardieu. She is one of the rare actors to receive an Oscar nomination for a non-English performance, earning a Best Actress nomination in 1993 for Regis Varganier’s Indochine.
“It’s always very difficult when you have to stop and look back at things as if you were thinking about the future, but that’s never the case,” Deneuve said. “How much luck, good decisions, sometimes wrong. After so many years, you have a list to look at, and you hope you’ve picked the right one most of the time. ,
Deneuve chose Demi’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), as well as his work with Truffaut and André Techin, as the most important of his career.
Not that the 78-year-old actress has any plans to stop working. He has two new projects on the go, currently shooting Leia Domnech’s La Tortue and the English-language feature Funny Birds, from directors Marco La Via and Hanna Ladoul, set to go into production later this year.
Considering her age, Deneuve said she thought it was “better to live in Europe than America if you’re an actress and are older… things have changed a lot [around ageism in the film business].” , but I still think things are better. For it in Europe.”
Deneuve is a Venice regular. Her breakthrough film from director Buuel, Belle de Jour, won Venice’s Golden Lion in 1967, and Deneuve took home the Copa Volpi for Best Actress at the festival in 1998 for her performance in Nicole Garcia’s Place Vendme.
Deneuve will receive her lifetime honor at Wednesday night’s opening ceremony.