Farewell to Jane Birkin, singer and actress dies at 76 • Asbury Cinema

Jane Birkin, British naturalized French singer and actress, icon of charm and elegance, has died. Success in the cinema brought him “Increase” by Michelangelo Antonioni. He was 76 years old.

She died today Jane Birkin, an English naturalized French singer and actress, a great icon of style and elegance, whose career alternated equally between music and cinema. Birkin, 76, was found dead this morning at her Paris home. The artist was known, as well as for many famous songs and film interpretations, for her long relationship, artistic and sentimental, with the French singer and composer Serge Gainsbourg in the 60s.

Born December 14, 1946 in London, Jane Birkin took her first steps in music by appearing in a musical in the 60s inspired by composer John Barry, whom she married at the age of 19 (from the marriage she had a daughter in 1967 Kate Berry, who later died in 2013). The film debut took place in 1965. not everyone has, directed by Richard Lester; but this is with Explode Michelangelo Antonioni, from the following year, that Birkin became famous, turning himself, thanks to his androgynous body and sensual femininity, into a symbol of the swinging London of the 60s.

After moving to France at the age of 21, she starred in Slogan

(1968), during the making of which he met Serge Gainsbourg: their creative collaboration would give life to one of the most famous and controversial songs of the sixties, namely Je t’aime… my non plus, 1969; a song that generated controversy due to its explicit content. In the 70s (during which the daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg) Birkin continued to alternate music and film, recording many albums written by her husband; at the same time he acted in successful French films (Pool, Roman horse thief, woman like me) and international (Murder on the Nile). She was also referred by her husband to Je t’aime my non plus (1976), a film that proved to be as controversial as the song of the same name.

In the 1980s, after parting ways with Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin met the French director Jacques Doillon, thanks to whom a new stage began in her career: no longer a transgressive icon of the past decade, but a more mature and complex personality. During this period, she starred in films directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Patrice Leconte, Paul Morrissey and, above all, Agnès Varda, with whom she developed an important professional partnership, until the director dedicated a film to her in 1988. Jane B. on behalf of Agnes V.

Twice in this decade Jane Birkin has been nominated for a César, the “Oscar of France”: the first time in 1984 for Pirate Jacques Doillon, and the second two years later for woman of my life Regime Varnier. In 1984, the French company Hermès dedicated one of their Birkin bags, the Birkin Bag, which would later be considered one of the most iconic and luxurious handbags in the world.

Beginning in the 1990s, Birkin reduced his presence in film, continuing to focus primarily on his musical activities, but appearing in films such as Papa Nostalgie (1990) Bertrand Tavernier, grumpy beauty

Jacques Rivette (1991), which brought her a new nomination for the César Award, One hundred and one nights Agnes Varda (1995) Words words words… Alain Resnais (1997) A soldier’s daughter never cries James Ivory (1998).

In 2007, Jane Birkin made her debut as a director with an autobiographical film. boxes; later, after a chronic illness, he retired from the stage after starring in a film. Quai d’Orsay Bertrand Tavernier (2013). She has always been busy, especially since the 2000s, also as an activist and supporter of human rights: in 2008 she dedicated herself to the release of the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and in the same years she participated in humanitarian initiatives in Bosnia. and Chechnya, then sang in the West Bank and Ramallah and performed in favor of the victims of the conflict in Rwanda. In 2016, the Locarno Film Festival honored her with the Lifetime Achievement Award.