Catherine Hessling (born Andrée Madeleine Heuschling; 22 June 1900 – 28 September 1979) was a French actress and the first wife of film director Jean Renoir.

Jean Renoir had been planning a career in ceramic art but decided instead to try his hand in the medium of film in the attempt, he would later claim, to make Hessling a star.

While both were aficionados of American films, and Hessling copied fashions and behaviour she saw on the screen, she had in fact never had any thought or ambition to become an actress herself.

Renoir devised for Hessling a very stark, exaggerated look, with the mouth and eyes a penetrating black against white facial make-up, which was again used in his first full-length film The Whirlpool of Fate, and the lavish and costly adaptation of Émile Zola's Nana (1926), in which Hessling's performance has been described as characteristically stylised and unsubtle, yet appropriate for this role.

[1] Following the couple's separation (the divorce was not finalised until 1943), Hessling appeared in minor roles in three sound films and had a brief career as a dancer before abandoning show business completely.