British-born actor and singer Jane Birkin, a 1960s wild child who became a beloved figure in France, has died in Paris at age 76. The French Culture Ministry said the country had lost a “timeless Francophone icon.”
Local media reported she had been found dead at her home, citing people close to her. Birkin had a mild stroke in 2021 after suffering heart problems in previous years.
Birkin was best known overseas for her 1969 hit in which she and her then-lover, the late French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, sang the sexually explicit “Je t’aime ... moi non plus.”
She had lived in her adopted France since the late 1960s and apart from her singing and roles in dozens of films, she was a popular figure for her warm nature, stalwart fight for women’s and LGBTQ rights.
The “most Parisian of the English has left us,” said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. “We will never forget her songs, her laughs and her incomparable accent which always accompanied us.” Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London in December 1946, daughter of British actor Judy Campbell and Royal Navy commander David Birkin.
She first took to the stage age 17 and went on to appear in the 1965 musical “Passion Flower Hotel” by conductor and composer John Barry, whom she married shortly after. The marriage ended in the late 1960s.
Before venturing across the Channel at age 22, she achieved notoriety in the controversial 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni film “Blow-Up,” appearing naked in a threesome sex scene.
But it was in France that she truly shot to fame, as much for her love affair with tormented national star Gainsbourg, as for her tomboyish style and endearing British accent when speaking French, which some said she cultivated deliberately.
Following the breakup of that relationship in 1981, she continued her career as a singer and actor, appearing on stage and releasing albums such as “Baby Alone in Babylone” in 1983, and “Amour des Feintes” in 1990, both with words and music by Gainsbourg.
She wrote her own album “Arabesque” in 2002, and in 2009 released a collection of live recordings, “Jane at the Palace.” “It’s unimaginable to live in a world without you,” said French singer Etienne Daho, who produced and composed Birkin’s last album in 2020.