France learns of secret sex, film and rock romance between Catherine Deneuve and Johnny Hallyday
He was France’s Elvis, she remains the grande dame of French film.
Despite their fame, Johnny Hallyday and Catherine Deneuve managed to keep a lifelong romance from fans, friends and family - hiding in planes and trains to meet for secret trysts, according to his biographer who revealed the simmering affair to the astonished French in a new book.
“Johnny” was a hugely popular rocker of the 1960s who exerted an unshakeable hold over the French until his 2017 death, which plunged the country into national mourning and prompted a eulogy by President Emmanuel Macron.
Deneuve, 76, a prolific actress long dubbed “the ice queen” for her glacial demeanour, won a Bafta for her portrayal of Belle de Jour and has been nominated 31 times for a César – the French national film award.
The French have pored over their love lives. She had a son with the director Roger Vadim, was married to David Bailey and had a daughter with Marcello Mastroianni. He was a self-professed womaniser, marrying four times, lastly to Laeticia Hallyday, 31 years his junior.
Yet biographer Gilles Lhote said they went to great lengths to hide their long romance from the world after hitting it off when they starred together in the 1961 film Les Parisiennes, when both were in their late teens and she was already with Vadim.
“To escape (the paparazzi), she would hide between seats or in the boot of his cars. They would take different planes so as not to raise suspicions,” he told Le Parisien. “It was all the more remarkable as Catherine Deneuve was the only woman who Johnny protected in the press. She was untouchable.”
“They were lovers, that’s obvious, but that wasn’t the most important thing in this unique relationship,” he said.
“Catherine remains the great and beautiful love of the 18 year-old me. The tenderness and friendship have remained. Feelings that we share until this day,” Mr Lhote cites him as saying in his book, Lady Lucille.
There had long been speculation over the identity of that sobriquet - rumoured to be a film star and to whom Hallyday devoted a song in which he says: “If too often I call you, if you grow weary of me, if sometimes I’m unfaithful, I have never loved anyone but you.”
Mr Lhote said: “Johnny told me: ‘When the time is right, it would be good if you recounted the real story of Lady Lucille’.”
Deneuve, who has made no official response to the claims, was curiously absent from Hallyday’s funeral.
However, he said: “On his tombstone in St Barths (the French Caribbean island where he spent much of his time), there was a wreath of flowers signed: ‘Lady L’.”
