It was a true tragedy that affected her from a young age: at just 23 years old, Catherine Deneuve lost her older sister, Françoise Dorléac, in a brutal car accident. A premature death for the young woman, who had a promising career ahead of her and who would have celebrated her 81st birthday this Tuesday. It was also an immense shock for her family, who withdrew into themselves…
They began their careers together: in their early twenties, Catherine Deneuve and her older sister, Françoise Dorléac, captivated audiences with several cult films. As “twin sisters” in the legendary movie Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, the two young women had promising careers ahead of them, with their dreamlike beauty and shared talent.
But tragedy disrupted a destiny that seemed set in stone. On June 26, 1967, Françoise Dorléac had to catch a flight. She was expected in Paris and needed to travel to London for a screening of Jacques Demy’s film. She left Saint-Tropez by car, heading to Nice Airport. However, along the way, she drove too fast, and her car skidded. Crashing at high speed into a lamppost, the vehicle caught fire, and she tragically perished in the flames.
It was an extremely difficult moment for the family. Catherine Deneuve later spoke about her sister in Psychologies Magazine, offering rare insights into such a painful topic. “It was a taboo subject in my family. The day she died, a heavy blanket fell over us, and talking about her became impossible, unfortunately,” she explained. A trauma from which their parents, Maurice Dorléac and Renée, struggled to recover—one that also forced Deneuve to take on a new role within the family.
“I feel like I had to take charge after losing my sister—of my parents and my other sisters. It didn’t manifest in a very direct way, but indirectly, I was there to hold things together and, above all, to support my parents and sisters. I was a little pillar,” she revealed in an interview. She spoke little about this loss, the “great tragedy of her life,” and waited 30 years to make a documentary about her sister, Elle s’appelait Françoise, directed by Anne Andreu.
It’s true that I could have done it earlier… I suppose I just wasn’t ready. You never know why one day it suddenly becomes possible to talk about something—it just happens. “I also thought about all those who mourn the loss of a child, a brother, a sister… I felt the need to express the pain that such a loss represents,” she confesses in the same interview, admitting that she never sought the help of a psychologist: “I spoke with my closest friends.”
For her, now preparing to celebrate her 80th birthday this year, and having marked the 55th anniversary of Françoise Dorléac’s death in 2022, the mourning has ended. Above all, because she has come to understand that her sister, through her work and her legacy, is eternal: “I feel that my sister is very present in our time. People talk about her, they know her—it’s quite surprising! And yet, not so much in the end. She can’t go out of style; you only have to watch her interviews or her films. Her way of doing her hair, dressing, living—her extravagance makes her a very contemporary woman.”
A beautiful tribute indeed!
