Jane Birkin dies aged 76 after long battle with cancer
British singer and actress Jane Birkin has died at her home in Paris following a long battle against cancer.
The 76-year-old star of cult films including Blow-Up was ‘found dead by a caregiver’ in the French capital this morning, said a family friend.
Ms Birkin‘s health hit headlines back in 2002, when she was diagnosed with Leukaemia, which she had described as a ‘not very painful cancer’ – but in May she cancelled a serious of concerts when it got worse.
She said at the time: ‘I have always been a great optimist, and I realise that I still need a little time to be able again on stage and with you’.
The London-born singer also suffered a stroke in 2021 and was forced to cancel several concerts that year. She cancelled shows again last March after breaking her shoulder blade.
She is one of Britain’s best-known Sixities sensations, known for her romantic affairs, striking looks and fashion sense. She is perhaps best known for the French duet Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus, which she sung with her ex Serge Gainsbourg in 1968.
Ms Birkin was an icon in her adopted France and catapulted to fame by her turbulent relationship with Mr Gainsbourg and her heavily accented French, which became her personal style signifier.
She crossed the Channel in 1968, at the age of 22, to star in a film alongside Mr Gainsbourg, who was 18 years her senior.
It was the start of a 13-year relationship that made them France’s most famous couple, in the spotlight as much for their bohemian and hedonistic lifestyle as for their work.
The doe-eyed Ms Birkin, with her soft voice and androgynous silhouette, quickly became a sex symbol, recording a steamy duo with a growling Mr Gainsbourg in 1969, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’.
Banned on radio in several countries for being too risqué and condemned by the Vatican, the song was a worldwide hit, reaching Number One in the UK Charts.
The couple, who never wed, became well known for their hedonistic party lifestyle, including much drinking and smoking. They separated in 1980, with Ms Birkin continuing to appear in films, and she recorded solo albums.
‘He and I became the most famous of couples in that strange way because of Je t’aime and because we stuck together for 13 years and he went on being my friend until the day he died. Who could ask for more?’ Ms Birkin told CNN in 2006.
‘So Paris became my home. I’ve been adopted here. They like my accent,’ she said.
With her flared jeans, mini dresses and messy bangs, Ms Birkin was the ultimate It girl in the 1970s. In 1984, Hermés named its Birkin handbag after her.
She was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2001 for her services to acting and British-French cultural relations.
In a chat with Interview Magazine in 2020, Ms Birkin also detailed her relationship with alcohol. She said: ‘I had to [give up alcohol]. When Jacques Doillon and I separated, I went off to Sarajevo and I met [the French writer] Olivier Rolin, and then after that I got quite serious with singing…
‘I made myself have a sort of Jewish-Christian morality thing, thinking if I had any pleasure at all, then the show wouldn’t work. I didn’t drink or smoke a cigarette for about a week before I did the show, then it would be a month before the show….
‘I had no noble reasons at all; it was only out of fear of the above. When I got leukemia, then of course everything stopped. It hasn’t been hard at all because the very idea of being sick, the very idea of it going to your head, makes me panic…
‘I simply hate [drinking]. I mean, I’m frightened by it. So, to even imagine my youth, I don’t know. It was another time.’
The singer also revealed at the time that she had been so insecure about her looks during her first marriage she slept with an eyeliner under her pillow so she could apply it if Mr Barry woke and he wouldn’t think she had ‘tiny, piggy eyes’.
Ms Birkin said she never believed that she was attractive and hid behind ‘a mask of make up’ for years. She claimed it wasn’t until her second marriage to Mr Gainsbourg that anyone told her she was beautiful.
President Emmanuel Macron said she ’embodied freedom’ as he led tributes following her death. He tweeted: ‘Because she embodied freedom, because she sang the most beautiful words of our language, Jane Birkin was a French icon.
‘A complete artist, her voice was as sweet as her engagements were fiery. She bequeaths us tunes and images that will never leave us.’
Rima Abdul Malak, France’s Minister of Culture, also paid tribute, tweeting ‘the most French of Britons is gone’.
She continued: ‘Jane B was mischief, impertinent elegance, the never-outdated emblem of an entire era, a murmuring voice that remains our idol.
‘A woman of heart, committed, whose disappearance leaves us Alone In Babylone,’ referencing one of Birkin’s songs.
Similarly, the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and the British ambassador to France Menna Rawlings described Birkin respectively as ‘the most Parisian of the English’ and ‘the most French of British artists’.