English-French actress, singer and style icon Jane Birkin has died. She was 76. She was found dead in her home in Paris, according to the French news outlet Le Parisien. No cause of death was revealed, but Birkin had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2021.
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Birkin was born in London on December 14, 1946. She was 17 when she married James Bond composer John Barry and the couple had a daughter, Kate. Soon after, Birkin shot to fame starring in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 cult film Blow Up, featuring a scene where she appeared nude.
When her marriage to Barry dissolved, Birkin later relocated to France when she was 20. She met poet and singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg on the set of the French romantic comedy Slogan in 1968. Gainsbourg and Birkin had a professional and personal relationship for 13 years, through 1981, and had a daughter Charlotte, born in 1971. Birkin and Gainsbourg continued to collaborate until his death in 1991.
“When I went to France and met Serge, he made me feel wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” said Birkin in 2018. “He gave me confidence in myself and managed to efface all the pain from what had happened before, and I think I probably did the same for him because he had just gotten over a love affair with [Brigitte] Bardot. So, in fact, we were two rather miserable souls who picked each other up.”
In 1982, Birkin gave birth to her third daughter, Lou Doillon, from her relationship with French director Jacques Doillon.
Throughout her career, Birkin starred in more than 65 films and released more than 20 albums, from her 1969 collaborative release with Gainsbourg, Je t’aime… moi non plus and their iconic and erotic title track duet, which hit No. 1 in the U.K. Her solo album Di Doo Dah came in 1973. She continued to release records through her 2020 album, Oh! Pardon tu dormais… (Oh, Sorry, You Were Sleeping), which was a collection of songs reflecting on her time with Gainsbourg and the death of her daughter Kate Barry in 2013.
An animal rights activist, Birkin was a fashion icon since the ’60s and later inspired the 1984 launch of Hermès iconic Birkin bag. In 2015, Birkin wrote a letter to the French fashion house requesting they remove her name from the bag after learning of the inhumane farming practices of crocodiles used to produce the bags.
Birkin continued performing in recent years but was forced to postpone several concerts in Paris after breaking her shoulder in March 2022. She suffered a stroke the year prior.
In 2021, Charlotte Gainsbourg made her directorial debut with the film, Jane by Charlotte, a docudrama featuring Birkin.
She is survived by her daughters, singers and actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon, along with her grandsons Ben Attal, Roman de Kermadec, and Marlowe Jack Tiger Mitchell, and granddaughter Alice Attal.
(Photo by Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
