Jane Birkin Dominates Front Pages As France Mourns Death Of British Actress & Singer; President Declares Her A French Icon
Jane Birkin graced the front pages of most French newspapers on Monday as France mourned the death of the late British actress and singer who enjoyed icon status in the country that she had called home since the late 1960s.
“Our tears can’t change anything,” proclaimed Le Parisien newspaper, which first broke the news of Birkin’s death at the age of 76 on Sunday.
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Libération ran with the simple headline “Without Jane”, while regional newspaper Le Maine Libre referred to the late actress as “The Eternal English Bride of France”.
International obituaries have highlighted Birkin’s notorious performance with partner and late bad boy of French pop music Serge Gainsbourg on the 1968 pop song, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’, or the fact she inspired the Hermès Birkin bag.
For the French, she was much more.
In a six-page tribute, Libération mused over the reasons for Birkin’s never-ending popularity in the country she had called home since the late 1960s.
“Why this special place, this popularity, which since the 1960s, never waned… Why this strange yet recurrent feeling of being magnetized by even the smallest appearance of Jane Birkin,” wrote the newspaper.
“Was it the British accent, so charming but a bit annoying at the same time? Or the fact, that beyond her sweetness, it allowed we, the French, to remind our frenemies the English, that we were the ones who spotted her talent?”
French President Emmanuel Macron went further, claiming Birkin as a “French icon”
“Because she represented freedom and sang the most beautiful words in our language, Jane Birkin was a French icon,” he said in a Tweet. “Her voice was as gentle as her political engagement was strong. She bequeaths us airs and images that we will never forgot.”
Born in London in 1946, Birkin broke into acting with small roles in Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 films Blowup and Kaleidoscope. During this period, she was briefly married to James Bond composer John Barry with whom she had her first daughter Kate Barry.
She moved to Paris in the late 1960s to live with Gainsbourg, who she met on the set of Pierre Grimblat’s Venice-set comedy romance Slogan.
The couple hit the headlines after their racy duo Je t’aime… moi non plus – in which Birkin makes climaxing sounds in the finals minute of the song – was banned from the radio in several countries including Sweden, Spain, Brazil and the U.K., where it shot to Number One nonetheless.
“Jane B. became the muse of a creator and era which both dreamed that everything was permitted. Half-Sagan, Half-Fonda, she had a discreet elegance, a shy audacity and an astonished smile of someone who doesn’t understand why everyone around her was going wild,” wrote Le Figaro of this period in her life.
On her legacy it added: “There was something old school in her, a perfume of another time and the spirit of a fighter. She fought for far-off causes, for her children, for her independence. With time, she distanced herself from Gainsbourg but she never broke with him completely. The French were attached to her. She was the babysitter who grew up with them. More recently, she even became a kind of wise woman.”
Having initially feared that her heavily accented French would prevent her from getting roles in France, Birkin was signed for Jacques Deray’s La Piscine as the alluring teenager who creates tension between the couple played by Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.
It paved the way for a parallel career in France U.K. over the 1970s and 80s, with her 95 acting credits including supporting roles in Roger Vadim’s Don Juan, If Don Juan Was A Woman, alongside Brigitte Bardot and Claude Zizi’s Animal as well as star billing in Clarisse Gabeus’s Melancholy Baby, opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Jacques Doillon’s La Fille Prodigue.
In the early 1980s, she also achieved famed with English-speaking audiences for her roles in the Agatha Christie films, Death On the Nile and Evil Under the Sun.
Alongside acting, Birkin had a parallel singing career, first with Gainsbourg and then alone from 1980, when she left the artist for Doillon.
Birkin recorded 15 studio albums and six live albums across her career and regularly took her music on tour in France and internationally.
She had been due to perform two concerts in Paris in June but was forced to cancel them in May due to poor heath.
“I’ve always been a big optimist, but I’ve understood I need a bit more time in order to be capable of being on stage with you. I would have so loved to be with you,” she said in a statement at the time.
Birkin is survived by her daughters, actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon.
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