French film star Catherine Deneuve, who set off a worldwide feminist backlash for bashing the #MeToo movement, has apologised to victims of sexual assault, saying there was "nothing good" about harassment.

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She was one of 100 prominent French women who signed an open letter last week defending men's “freedom to importune.”

Deneuve apologises

"I warmly greet all the victims of these hideous acts who might have felt offended by that letter which appeared in Le Monde (Tuesday). It is to them and them alone that I offer my apologies," the actress said in a letter published Sunday on the website of French daily Liberation.

But the screen legend distanced herself "from certain signatories of the letter... who have distorted the spirit of the text by expanding upon it in the media," and apologised "to the victims of these hideous acts who might have felt offended by the letter.

France's most revered actress was among 100 prominent women to sign the open letter defending a man's right to "bother" women, complaining that the campaign against harassment had become "puritanical".

She also defended her own feminist credentials citing French feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir's historic 1971 declaration of women who admitted having abortions while it was still illegal, which she also signed.

Deneuve's statement was seen as an attempt to distance herself from porn star-turned-agony aunt Brigitte Lahaie, who caused an outcry by claiming Thursday that some women have orgasms when they are raped.

The former Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi, notorious for his "bunga bunga" parties with prostitutes, had also thanked the "blessed" Deneuve for speaking out.

Author Catherine Millet author of the bestselling memoir, "The Sexual Life of Catherine M.", and one of the main movers behind the text, also raised eyebrows by standing by a claim that she "really regretted not having being raped, because then I could have shown that you get over it."

Global reactions

Their letter to Le Monde on Tuesday deplored the wave of "denunciations" which has followed claims that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted and harassed women over decades.

It claimed that #MeToo had become a puritanical "witch-hunt" which threatened sexual freedom.

But Deneuve said what she was attacking was "this characteristic of our era where everyone feels they have the right... to condemn. An era where simple denunciations on social networks cause punishment, resignation, and... often media lynching," she wrote in Liberation.

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