Françoise Paulette Louise Dorléac (March 21, 1942 – June 26, 1967) was a French actress. She was the elder sister of Catherine Deneuve, with whom she starred in the 1967 musical, The Young Girls of Rochefort. Her other films include Philippe de Broca’s movie That Man from Rio, Francois Truffaut’s The Soft Skin, Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac and Val Guest’s Where the Spies Are.
Dorléac modeled for Dior and made her film debut in The Wolves in the Sheepfold (1960). She went on to appear in The Door Slams (1960). Dorléac had a small role in Tonight or Never (1961), The Girl with the Golden Eyes (1961), All the Gold in the World (1961) and Adorable Liar (1961).
Dorléac’s parents were protective of her and her siblings, and well into adulthood she shared a bunk bed with her sister Deneuve in the family home, to which she regularly returned, according to Roger Vadim.
In December 1960, she met future co-star Jean-Pierre Cassel at the Épi-Club, a fashionable Montparnasse nightclub where she danced and partied with her younger sister, who also met Vadim there through mutual acquaintances. Cassel wrote in his 2004 autobiography that Dorléac had been the “love of his youth.”
She was briefly the companion of Francois Truffant in 1964, during and after the filming of the film La Peau Douce. This affair quickly turned into a friendship between the actress and the director, who affectionately called her “Raspberry.”
In an interview with Liberation, Guy Bedos, who also appears in Ce Soir ou Jamais, evokes his missing relatives and significant others including her: “I had a fiancée, Françoise Dorléac. Since her death, I can no longer pass in front of the Louvre without seeing her.”
Later she lived in an apartment at 159, boulevard Murat, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, just opposite the building where she grew up and where her parents lived.
Dorléac was on the brink of international stardom when she died in a traffic accident on June 26, 1967, aged 25. She lost control of her rented Renault 10 and hit a signpost ten kilometres from Nice at the Villenauve-Loubet exit of the autoroute La Provencale. The car flipped over in a field and burst into flames. Dorléac had been en route to Nice Airport after vacationing with Deneuve at Saint-Tropez and was afraid of missing her flight. She was pinned under the steering wheel and was seen struggling to get out of the car, but was unable to unbuckle her seat belt and open the door. Police later identified her body only from the fragment of a cheque book, a diary, and her driver’s licence.
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