Catherine Fabienne Deneuve was born October 22, 1943 in Paris, France, to actor parentsRenée Simonot andMaurice Dorléac. She made her movie debut in 1957, when she was barely a teenager and continued with small parts in minor films, untilRoger Vadim gave her a meatier role inLe vice et la vertu (1963). Her breakthrough came with the excellent musicalCherbourg no Amagasa (1964), in which she gave an unforgettable performance as a romantic middle-class girl who falls in love with a young soldier but gets imprisoned in a loveless marriage with another man; the director was the giftedJacques Demy, who also cast Deneuve in the less successfulRoshufôru no koibito tachi (1967). She then played a schizophrenic killer inRoman Polanski'sHanpatsu (1965) and a married woman who works as a part-time prostitute every afternoon inLuis Buñuel's masterpieceBelle de jour (1967). She also worked with Buñuel inKanashimi no Tristana (1970) and gave a great performance forFrançois Truffaut inKurakunaru made, kono koi o (1969), a kind of apotheosis of her "frigid femme fatale" persona. In the seventies she didn't find parts of that caliber, but her magnificent work in Truffaut'sShûdensha (1980) as a stage actress in Nazi-occupied Paris revived her career. She was also very good in the epic dramaIndochine (1992), for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress). Although the elegant and always radiant Deneuve has never appeared on stage, she is universally hailed as one of the "grandes dames" of French cinema, joining a list that includes such illustrious talents asSimone Signoret,Jeanne Moreau,Isabelle Huppert,Isabelle Adjani and the youngerJuliette Binoche.