A figure of cinema and music died. This Sunday, July 16, 2023, Jane Birkin died at the age of 76. According to information from the Parisian, she was found lifeless at her home. She leaves behind her family, as well as thousands of grieving fans, in France and in Great Britain.
Born on December 14, 1946 in Marylebone, London, to a military father and an actress mother, Serge Gainsbourg’s ex-girlfriend was rocked in the artistic world from an early age, so much so that she quickly fell in love with comedy. At the age of 18, she made her debut on the big screen, in Richard Lester’s film The Knack… and how to get it. Her career then took off very quickly and she obtained a role in Blow Up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 1965, she married the English composer John Barry with whom she had a daughter, Kate Barry in 1967. But quickly, the two spouses divorced. But shortly after this episode, on the set of the film Slogan, Jane Birkin meets the second man in her life, Serge Gainsbourg.
From the fruit of their union was born another child, now famous, Charlotte Gainsbourg. Alongside her companion, Jane Birkin then had the opportunity to launch into music with their joint single Je t’aime… moi non plus, released in 1969. After that, she had a string of successes and several of her albums were even sacred gold records.
But their romance did not last forever and Serge Gainsbourg and his partner separated at the end of the 1970s. A few years later, in 1980, she met the father of her third daughter Lou Doillon, the director Jacques Doillon, but they separated in 1992, ten years after the birth of their child.
Throughout her life, Jane Birkin had a number of misfortunes, but one was particularly hard on her.
December 11, 2013 was a fateful day for Jane Birkin. She faces every mother’s nightmare and learns of the death of her daughter Kate Barry. In the documentary Jane Birkin and us broadcast in September 2022, the singer opened up about this tragic event. “I found that I no longer had the right to exist, that I had failed”, she confided. .
On the set of We are live, January 9, 2021, she also insisted on this episode, and how much he had marked it. “I said nothing for 7 years, I wrote nothing, I stopped my diary the day she died, because I found that I had nothing more to say…”.
On August 29, 2021, Jane Birkin suffered a stroke. After that, she was forced to cancel her tour and the doctors recommended a four-month convalescence. “I’ve never been scared for myself. When you’re the accident victim, it’s not scary at all. It wasn’t fun for my loved ones, but I didn’t suffer in any way.”
Despite this accident and her age at the time of the events, Jane Birkin quickly recovered and even resumed her tour in January 2022.