Catherine Deneuve opens up about her stroke

At 81, Catherine Deneuve does not plan to end her career anytime soon. The actress is starring in the film Yokai – the spirit world directed by Eric Khoo and in theaters from February 26. However, certain events almost prevented him from being in front of the cameras. In 2019, while she was on the set of the film During his lifetimeby Emmanuelle Bercot, the icon of French cinema suffers a stroke. An event that she agreed to discuss with journalist Philippe Lançon, in a major interview for the French edition of Vanity Fair . She explains that she felt the stroke coming. “I had hesitations about my text, memory lapses. I said it. They immediately realized that something was wrong and they reacted,” says Catherine Deneuve. She then received treatment at the Rothschild hospital before being transferred to Les Invalides.

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“Seeing this is difficult”

Catherine Deneuve spent three weeks in the same hospital, where Philippe Lançon was treated after being a victim of the terrorist attacks. Charlie Hebdo. She confides to her interlocutor that it was during her convalescence that she read her book, The flap, in which he recounts the events of January 7, 2015. “Around me people told me, “don’t read this, it will depress you”. I read it and it was quite the opposite, it made me feel good,” says the actress. If the place of his healing, at the National Institution of Invalides, is of great beauty, the atmosphere there is sometimes heavy. “Seeing all these young men injured, amputees, these soldiers in this state… There was one who was still lying on his back, on a stretcher, he could no longer walk. He had made a jump and his parachute had not opened. He looked at the sky, the dome and he smoked. He was handsome. Seeing that is difficult,” confides Françoise Dorléac’s sister. The memory of which she evokes, in the article, through her reading of Patrick Modiano's book, The Dancerpublished in 2023: “Because my sister danced a lot, it reminded me of so many things, gestures, habits… Slippers… And I really like this secret that remains at the end. »