2023-07-17 07:29:00
French singer and actress Jane Birkin, one of the icons of singing and acting in France, where her name became prominent, especially due to her artistic and emotional association with the famous singer Serge Gainsbourg, died on Sunday at the age of 76, according to a source familiar with the file.
Birkin was found dead inside her home in Paris, according to the same source.
Born in London in 1946, the artist, who holds French citizenship, recently revealed health problems that forced her to cancel a series of her concerts.
Birkin appeared weak in February, during her participation in the Cesar Awards ceremony, which is described as the “Oscar of French Cinema”, along with her daughter, actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, and her granddaughter Alice.
Birkin achieved international fame with songs including “Je t’aime, moi non plus” (“Je t’aime, moi non plus”), engraved in the French musical memory, which caused a scandal when it was released in 1969, in addition to “Gene B” in the same year. and “Ex-fan des sixties” (1978).
Birkin succeeded in winning over the public, especially thanks to her sensitive personality, and the tyrannical English accent that she kept throughout her life.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Birkin, describing her as a “French icon” and “an integrated artist” who was “singing the most beautiful words of our language” French.
For her part, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Bourne described the late singer as an “unforgettable icon” and a “generational” woman.
In cinema, Birkin participated in the film “Blow up” by Antonioni, winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967, and in the film “La Piscine” (“La Piscine”) with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon in 1969. Her acting credits abound with about seventy films signed by well-known directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Doyon and Agnès Varda.
Her meeting with singer and composer Serge Gainsbourg, after moving to Paris at the age of twenty, was a pivotal stage in her career, as it was the first of a flaming musical and emotional relationship between the two that lasted thirteen years.
The couple formed a legendary duo in Paris in the seventies of the twentieth century, mixing passion, brilliance and scandals.
Art and fashion icon
Jane Birkin ultimately could not stand Gainsbourg’s temperamental and sometimes violent personality. In 1981, she fled their apartment on the rue Vernoy in Paris, with her two daughters, Kate (born from a previous marriage to John Barry) and Charlotte, and recreated her family life with director Jacques Doyon.
Even many years after the death of Serge Gainsbourg in 1991, and despite the hardships she faced, including the death of her daughter Kate Barry in 2013, and then suffering from leukemia that had long eluded recovery, Jane Birkin continued for a long time to sing to the famous artist with whom she formed a duet. Among the most famous in modern French artistic history.
Jane Birkin was also a fashion icon during her long career, so that in 1984 the house of “Hermes” named one of its handbags after her.
Jane Birkin is an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. In France, she was awarded the Order of Letters and Arts. But she refused the Legion of Honor in 1989, justifying that with her belief that “only champions” should receive this recognition.
It was a way of greeting her father, David, a Royal Navy officer who ferried resistance fighters from Britain to France during World War II and who died in 1991, on the day of Serge Gainsbourg’s funeral.
In 2007, Birkin directed her first movie, “Boxes”, and the work was presented at a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival.
Birkin’s health has deteriorated in recent years, and she suffered a minor stroke in 2021, which forced her to cancel several commitments.
The circumstances of Jane Birkin’s death have not been determined.
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