WHEN I DIVORCED DENEUVE SHE SAID WE COULD BE LOVERS
IT WAS at the Ad Lib club in Soho, one of the Sixties’ coolest venues, where I first saw Catherine Deneuve. The director Roman Polanski had just finished making his first English-speaking picture, Repulsion, with her. He said: ‘That woman’s made for you.’ ‘No, she’s not,’ I said. ‘She’s too short, and a bit on the fat side for me as well.’ Polanski wanted me to photograph her for Playboy, to promote Repulsion. Catherine didn’t like the idea, and neither did I. But Roman is very persistent. In the end he persuaded her. I did them as a favour to Polanski, really. I went to Paris and saw Catherine again. It was a long photographic session in her flat. Of all the French people I’ve ever known, she was one of the few who had a sense of humour. Catherine and I had an instant attraction. At some point during this session — at the end of it, I think — the earth moved. It was my friend and fellow photographer Brian Duffy who started the idea of us getting married. I’ve never been a fan of marriage — it’s stupid, I think. If you don’t like someone, leave ’em. Seems pointless. I learned that from growing up in the East End: all those people stuck with each other and hating each other. All right for the rich, but if you’re poor you couldn’t get divorced. But Duffy and I had a bet. ‘I bet she wouldn’t marry you,’ he said. I said: ‘I bet she will.’ ‘I bet you ten bob she wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘All right, I’ll ask her.’ So we drove, me and Duffy, to Normandy to the set where Catherine was filming. She came running across this cornfield when she saw us, and I said: ‘Will you marry me?’ And she said yes. We were married within a couple of weeks in August 1965. It was all quick, it was all fun. We got married in the register office at King’s Cross. I always got married there. Got married there three times; should have got a discount. I remember some journalist said to me: ‘Do you get upset when you see someone caressing your wife’s t*ts?’ I replied: ‘Not really, because they’re doubles.’ She never showed her t*ts; I think it was that middle-class thing. I used to argue with Catherine about it. ‘One day,’ I said, ‘actresses will do this and it will be normal.’ ‘No, it will never happen,’ she said. She was a bit square, a bit French in that way. They’re supposed to be the great lovers, but they’re not. I think the men worried more about how women tied their scarves. In June 1967, in the South of France, Catherine’s sister Françoise was killed when her car collided with a pylon and caught fire. The rescuers came too late to save her. Catherine changed a lot after that. We were together for three years, but after Françoise died, I rarely saw her. We were friends, but lived in different countries. We got a divorce in 1972. She rang me up and told me it was done. She said: ‘Now we can be lovers.’ I remember one thing Catherine said that was uncanny: she once saw a picture of Penelope Tree in American Vogue, before I’d ever met Penelope, and said to me: ‘You’re going to go off with this girl.’