Luis Bunuel, the director who launched her into the international stratosphere with his Belle De Jour, described her thus: "As beautiful as death, as seductive as sin and as cold as virtue."

Catherine Deneuve wears a beige cashmere jumper and pencil skirt but, at 62, her tights are fishnets. Her face retains an extraordinary clarity.

"Yes, your face changes," she sniffs with French insouciance, "but whatever age you get to, you are still dealing with the same bones."

She is in London as the face of MAC's Icon makeup range. Iconic status is perhaps too easily granted nowadays but Miss Deneuve, like Miss Bacall and Miss Loren, is part of a league the like of which the modern generation seems unable to produce.

Deneuve was muse to Yves Saint Laurent and joined him on the catwalk for his final show in 2002. She still wears the label while making sure she is au fait with younger designers. Miuccia Prada says: "It is so rare to find someone who embodies magic, and Catherine does it so gracefully that she becomes an icon for everyone."

Deneuve possesses the rare allure that fascinates men and women equally. "I am not a threat to women," she says, "because I like women, and men I handle with a sense of humour. Making an unexpected or inappropriate joke can break down barriers. Flirting, whatever age you are, is often about laughing."

Deneuve was born in wartime Paris, the third of four daughters. Her older sister, Francoise Dorleac, preceded her into acting and was a promising star until she was killed in a car crash in 1967.

Making her screen debut at 13, Deneuve cornered her market in icy blondeness from 1965, when she played a beautician driven to murder by her sexual cravings in Roman Polanski's Repulsion, followed by the 1967 Belle De Jour, in which she played an unhappy housewife who whiles away her afternoons working in a brothel.

The father of her oldest child Christian, now 42, (she later had a daughter, Chiara, now 33, with Marcello Mastroianni) was French director Roger Vadim, who married Brigitte Bardot pre-Deneuve and Jane Fonda later. She was born a brunette, but Vadim, who left Bardot for Deneuve when the latter was only 17, had a preference for blondes and, "yes, I dyed my hair for a man", she sighs, "but I knew it looked good".

The only man she actually married was David Bailey. From 1965 until 1972 she lived with the photographer in London and retains a fondness for the city.

Now Deneuve spends a great deal of her time at her house in Normandy, where she is a committed gardener. "I always wear jewels when I garden. But you shouldn't really notice when a woman is wearing jewels." Nonetheless, the heavy sapphire on her right hand keeps winking at me.

Even when gardening, she wears makeup. "I always wear a good base and maybe a little kohl."

What is it like to grow older? "I spent my youth trying to prove I could act," she says. "And you don't notice yourself changing. Suddenly, poof ! You see you look different. In America it is hard to get work after 40. For me, I noticed a change later than that; probably at around 50. But the Europeans have a more admiring attitude to maturity - we are more civilised."