Photos of the life of the “ex-fan of the sixties”

She was the French people’s favorite Englishwoman, a fashion icon and a voice tinged with a delicious accent. Jane Birkin died exactly one year ago, on July 16, 2023, at the age of 76, in Paris, after having left her mark on song and cinema. Originally from London, naturalized French, whose name is inseparable from that of Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin had reported health problems that had forced her to cancel concerts. Here is her life in pictures.

Realization : Olivier JUSZCZAK

• Daughter of a great resistance fighter, David Birkin and a famous actress, Judy Campbell, Jane Birkin was born on December 14, 1946 in London. She was noticed in the cinema in “Blow up” by Michelangelo Antonioni (Palme d’or 67 at Cannes).

• She was less than 20 years old when she married the English composer John Barry, 13 years her senior. The couple had a daughter, Kate. They separated after two years of relationship and she decided to try her luck in Paris.

• In 1968, on the set of the film Slogan by Pierre Grimblat, she meets Serge Gainsbourg.

• The relationship with Serge Gainsbourg is decisive in Jane’s life. It makes the couple a legendary duo of Paris in the seventies, mixing passion, glamour and scandals. Jane Birkin lends her voice in 1969 – “erotic year” – on the sulphurous I love you, me neither. Brigitte Bardot had banned the release of the initial version in which she performed, at the time of her affair with “The Man with the Cabbage Head”. It was a success.

• In 1971, he released Melody Nelson’s Storya concept album designed by Gainsbourg around Jane, a commercial failure upon its release, which later became a classic.

• A tortured and passionate relationship that will last twelve years between the two artists. They are more than 15 years apart.

• The couple quickly fascinated with their charisma and taste for scandals.

• In 1971, their daughter Charlotte was born.

• In front of the lenses, the couple becomes iconic.

• The end of the story is known. Jane suffocates in front of the one who has become “Gainsbarre”, locked in his excesses. In 1981, she flees their apartment on rue Verneuil in Paris, with her daughters Kate and Charlotte.

• The same year she broke up with Serge Gainsbourg, she began an affair with filmmaker Jacques Doillon. From this relationship, which lasted twelve years, Lou, her third daughter, was born.

• In cinema, Jane Birkin was seen in Blow up by Antonioni, Palme d’Or 1967, then in The swimming pool with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon in 1969. She was often confined to silly roles before asserting herself with directors like Agnès Varda, Michel Deville, Bertrand Tavernier.

• “When you are so pretty, so fresh, so spontaneous, with a child’s voice, you don’t have the right to die,” said actress Brigitte Bardot in a statement sent to AFP, saluting an artist “eternal in our hearts.” They had played together in front of Roger Vadim’s camera in Don Juan or If Don Juan were a woman in 1973.

• “So funny, so intelligent, so fragile, so generous, so everything!” wrote on Twitter the actor Pierre Richard, who formed with her, on screen, an often whimsical couple. As here, in Mustard up my nose by Claude Zidi in 1974.

• His relationship with Doillon did not prevent him from continuing to sing Gainsbourg.

• And he continued to write for her. She recorded in particular Baby Alone in Babylone (1983), which went gold.

• In 1991, her clan was marked by the death of Serge Gainsbourg. “You can be in love with someone and keep in your life, your head, your heart, another person. It’s obvious. As soon as I left, in 81, I knew that I would regret it” Jane would assure in her diary.

• Another tragedy turns Jane’s life upside down. In 2013, her daughter Kate Barry, born in 1967 from her union with John Barry, threw herself out of a window in Paris.

• His daughter Kate Barry (1967-2013) was a talented photographer/portraitist.

• In 1999, Jane Birkin released her first album without Gainsbourg, with songs written for her by French singer-songwriters such as Françoise Hardy and Alain Souchon.

• In 2008, the first album for which she wrote all the lyrics was released, Winter children. She will do it again in 2020 with Oh! Sorry, you were sleeping.a record designed with the French composer and performer Étienne Daho.

• Long after Gainsbourg’s death, and despite trials including the sudden death of her daughter Kate, and then a leukemia that took a long time to heal, Jane has always sung Serge’s work. Here, with her two daughters Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon, in 2016.

• In February 2023, she appeared weakened during the last César ceremony, the French cinema awards, alongside her daughter, the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, who had dedicated a documentary to her in 2021, Jane by Charlotte.

• The public appreciated her for her sensitivity, underlined by the delicate British accent that she kept throughout her life. She leaves us at the age of 76.