She is considered one of the greatest European actresses on film. Deneuve made her screen debut in at age 13, in a film shot the previous year when she was only Deneuve used her mother's maiden name, which she chose for her stage name, in order to differentiate herself from her sisters. Deneuve attended Catholic schools. Variety praised her performance describing her writing, "Catherine Deneuve, a winsome-looking type that other directors have forced to act, here is allowed to be herself.
She etches a fine portrait of a year-old in love. In her English-language debut, Deneuve played the cold but erotic persona, for which she would be nicknamed the "ice maiden", in Roman Polanski 's psychological horror thriller Repulsion Deneuve stars as a young woman who spends her midweek afternoons as a high-class prostitute , while her husband is at work.
Melissa Anderson writing for Criterion declared, "Deneuve's performance in Belle de jour turned out to be one of her most iconic". The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby praised the film writing, "As in all of Truffaut's films, love leads only to an uncertain future that, at best, may contain some joy along with the inevitable misery.
Truffaut's special talent, however, is for communicating a sense of the value of that joy. Roger Ebert praised the film writing, "It provides a visual feast and fanciful imaginations, and Deneuve was then, as she was before and since, a great beauty with the confidence such beauty requires. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded a full four stars out of four and wrote that "violence takes a back seat to character development and storytelling techniques that are classical.
Hustle is the kind of picture you don't want to see end. It's going to be a cult favorite. The following year, she acted in Claude Lelouch 's Second Chance She gained acclaim for her role in Tony Scott 's The Hunger as a bisexual vampire, co-starring with David Bowie and Susan Sarandon , a role which brought her a significant lesbian following, mostly among the gothic subculture.
