Catherine Deneuve's Father was a Nazi Collaborator

20/10/2007

The actor father of Catherine Deneuve was a Nazi collaborator, according to a new unauthorised biography of the French actress.

Bernard Violet, a investigative writer, says in his book, that Maurice Dorléac, made 72 pro-Nazi radio appearances on the anti-Semitic Radio-Paris during the German occupation.

He also claims that Dorléac featured in several propaganda films, including one that praised the Milice, the political police of the Vichy regime.

Violet said that he found the damning evidence after spending months trawling through the French national archives.

Dorléac was found guilty after the war of "giving aid to Germany... and damaging the unity of the French nation". He was banned from working as an actor for six months. He died in 1979.

Deneuve, 63, who was born in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1943, lobbied to prevent publication of the book, which went on sale in France this week.

The actress, who has often been described as the most beautiful woman in the world, is usually seen in her home country as a warm, if rather disorganised person, beneath an icy, controlled exterior.

But Violet claims that this image is a "legend" constructed by the actress herself.

"Catherine Deneuve, the woman, I find very disappointing. She is not an especially happy person, rather a sad one," he says.

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