Daily Inspiration Quote by Catherine Deneuve

Deneuve’s line lands with the weary clarity of someone who’s watched “progress” become a set dressing. Yes, women have moved into the frame in greater numbers, but visibility isn’t the same as legibility. Her key qualifier - “that people know about” - points to the real choke point: not the existence of lesbian characters or lesbian actresses, but the industry’s tight control over what can be safely named, marketed, and consumed without upsetting the presumed straight audience.

As an actress who came up in a European cinema often praised for sophistication, Deneuve is also puncturing a comfortable myth: that art-house sensuality equals sexual frankness. Films can be full of female bodies and female intimacy and still treat lesbianism as either a tasteful suggestion, a temporary experiment, or an exotic flourish for heterosexual eyes. In that sense, “a lot of women in films” can coexist perfectly with a scarcity of lesbians, because the camera’s attention has historically been less about women’s interior lives than about women as objects of narrative and desire.

The sentence also implies a second erasure: closeting by omission. “Few who are lesbians” isn’t only about roles; it’s about public knowledge, the risk calculus around careers, and the way celebrity culture rewards ambiguity while punishing specificity. Deneuve is naming how representation gets counted: not by what’s possible in private, but by what the culture allows to be spoken aloud.