If there was a Nobel prize for Beauty, a Life-Long Achievement, surely it would be awarded to Catherine Deneuve on the occasion of her seventieth birthday this week.
But Alfred Nobel did not think of that category when he created the prize. Instead, her image was used to represent Marianne, the national symbol of France, from 1985 to 1989.
And, as the face of Chanel Number 5 in the late 1970s, she caused sales of the perfume to soar in the United States – so much so that the American press, captivated by her charm, nominated her as the world’s most elegant woman.
When I was younger and pondering the difference between “sexy” and “beauty”, my lightbulb moment utterance was: “Bardot was sexy (this was the 1980s) - Deneuve is beautiful.”