Jane Birkin
Jane Birkin OBE (born 14 December 1946) is an actress and singer.
The second child of Major David Birkin and actress/singer Judy Campbell, Jane was born in London on December 14th, 1946. With a happy family, a childhood spent in the countryside, vacations to the Isle of Wight and boarding school classes, Jane was tame and well-behaved until the sixties revolution...
As a teenager, a miniskirted Chelsea girl, Jane embraced the pop excitement of " Swinging London ". Following in her mother's footsteps, she started auditioning. Noticed by Binky Beaumont, she made her acting debut at seventeen at the Haymarket Theater playing a young deaf-mute in Carving a Statue by Graham Greene.
But it was in a musical, Passion Flower Hotel, at the Prince of Wales Theater, that she made her singing debut. She auditioned for the part encouraged by composer John Barry, author of the James Bond 007 theme and whom she ended up marrying at nineteen. After a first movie experience in Richard Lester's The Knack, she was hired by Antonioni who was shooting Blow Up, which later received the Palme d'Or Award at the Cannes international film festival. This movie also created her first controversy brief scene, where she appeared naked; it was the talk of London.
After the failure of marrying too young and the birth of her daughter Kate in 1967, she decided to move to France. Recruited by French filmmaker Pierre Grimblat to star in his movie Slogan, it was love at first sight between Jane and her costar Serge Gainsbourg, a popular singer and musician.
A fashionable couple on the Paris scene, they made the headlines in 1969 with a artfully disturbing song, Je t'aime moi non plus Offending to some people, a delight to others, Jane's sensuous lovemaking sighs became a hit around the world.
A fragile, thin voice always on the verge of breaking remained her lasting trademark and was cleverly used by Gainsbourg who adapted his songwriting to Jane's timbre. He composed especially for her and shaped her according to his desires. They stayed together for twelve years, becoming a popular couple, adulated by the public and the media. In 1971, they had a daughter, Charlotte, who is now an actress.
During this happy period, Jane played in some thirty movies, including many comedies, a few detective films and one masterpiece C the first movie directed by Serge, Je t'aime moi non plus (1975). At the same time, she went on with her singing career, recording four albums which built her image as a sometimes sexy sometimes wistful Lolita, best showcased in her 1978 hit LP Ex-fan des sixties. In the early eighties, her personal life and career came to a watershed as she separated from Serge Gainsbourg and wanted to break away from her image of a "funny English girl". Behind her laughing, scatty naiveté and her British accent so delightfully amusing and sexy to French ears, there was an anxious, distressed and insomniac woman trying to come out.
This facet of her personality was reflected in several films d'auteur, especially those by Jacques Doillon, from La Fille prodigue to La Pirate. From Doillon she had her third daughter, Lou, born in 1982.
Serge Gainsbourg continued composing for her, but his songs became solemn, complex and subtle. Their album Baby alone in Babylone was a smash hit in 1983. Meanwhile, Jane pursued her movie career, but the films she played in were few and far between. She was in search of new experiences: she directed a TV feature film and ventured on stage for recitals.
In 1987, she gave her first gig at Le Bataclan, a former Parisian music hall, and, gradually, by establishing a rapport with her audiences, she developed a taste for the stage. She dreamt of acting and singing in a musical. She performed at Le Casino de Paris in 1991 two month after Gainsbourg's death and dedicated the concert to him. She also paid tribute to him in London in September 1994 at a charity event at the Savoy Theater, to give him recognition in her home country.
She wanted to do away with the "scandal Jane" image she had had in England since her infamous debut, and, in 1995, she played Andromache in The Trojan Women by Euripides at the National Theater.
In 1996 the album Version Jane is a final tribute to Gainsbourg including a potpourri of his songs, which Jane performed at the Paris music temple L'Olympia. She took them on tour in the spring of 1997, with a stop at the London Royal Festival Hall.
In 1998, she released her first album without Serge Gainsbourg A la légère with songs written by 12 contemporary French song writers, such as Daho, Art Mengo, Chamfort, Lavoine, Zazie, Souchon/Voulzy, François Hardy. This album is followed in 1999 by the release of The Best of Jane Birkin.
In 1999, Jane Birkin met the musician Djamel Benyelles show "orientalised" a few of Gainsbourg's titles such as "Elisa", "Couleur Café" or "Comment te dire adieu". This project is first presented at the Festival d'Avignon in 1999 then at the legendary Théâtre de l'Odéon : the success was phenomenal. An international tour is currently taking place, bringing Arabesque through France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, UK, Scandinavia, New York, Canada, Asia...
In 2006, she will play Elektra directed by Philippe Calvario in France.
She has been awarded an OBE for her services to acting, as well as the Ordre National du Mérite in France.
She is noted for being the inspiration for fashion house Hermès' popular Birkin Bag. The Hermes Birkin bag was named after Birkin, after the actress was seen struggling with several bags while boarding an airplane
Her image features on the cover art of Have You Fed the Fish? by singer song writer Badly Drawn Boy.
Discography
1969 - Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg
1973 - Di doo dah
1975 - Lolita go home
1978 - Ex fan des sixties
1983 - Baby alone in Babylone
1987 - Lost song
1987 - Jane Birkin au Bataclan
1990 - Amours des feintes
1992 - Integral au Casino de Paris
1996 - Versions Jane
1996 - Integral a l'Olympia
1999 - A la legere
2002 - Arabesque
2004 - Rendez-Vous
2005 - Open Season (with Feist)
2006 - Fictions
Actress - filmography
Cast:
2001 - A Hell of a Day
1999 - The Last September
1998 - A Soldiers Daughter Never Cries
1997 - Same Old Song
1991 - La Belle Noiseuse Divertimento
1991 - La Belle Noiseuse
1990 - These Foolish Things
1986 - Soigne ta Droite
1985 - Dust
1984 - Amour par terre, L
1984 - Le Garde du Corps
1981 - Evil Under the Sun
1978 - Death on the Nile
1975 - Catherine and Co.
1975 - I Love You, I Dont
1974 - French Mustard
1973 - Don Juan or If Don Juan Were a Woman
1971 - Romance of a Horse Thief
1970 - Sex Power
1969 - Slogan
1968 - La Piscine
1968 - Wonderwall
1966 - Blowup
1966 - Kaleidoscope
1965 - The Knack ...and How to Get It
Director:
1991 - Contre lOubli
Quotes.
"Big Ben... hearing the chimes makes me feel at home."
"For my latest film, I play a grandmother, which I wasn't worried about because I have grandchildren, but the director wanted me to have the right blend of matronly authority."
"I do rather like Shelley Duvall-adolescent and gauche. A stringy girl who hasn't really become a woman."
"Any film I see at two o'clock in afternoon with my mother seems to cast a strange spell that means we both come out sobbing."
"Everything I wear doesn't put me in the league of women. If I were a boy, I could look a lot prettier than a lot of boys I know."
"He painted me when I was young because he was in love with me, but now that he has loved me he doesn't paint me anymore."
"I thought I had a criminal record because of my criminal record, if you see what I mean. But it just shows that time heals all."
"As there is no one to be pleased or unpleased with me, I'm actually rather merrier with my cat."
"By meeting people in Sarajevo I realized I had nothing to complain about-they'd lost children crossing the road trying to find water. I stopped thinking about my problems and would sit with women in underground places, singing songs."
"David Attenborough... has that wonderful, breathy voice and he's always so fascinated by what he's seeing. There's nothing about him that I can't find attractive."
"Everything I wear doesn't put me in the league of women. If I were a boy, I could look a lot prettier than a lot of boys I know."
"He always said that he liked me because he was scared of breasts-although Bardot and Bambou had the prettiest bosoms imaginable. Serge got girls because he was so clever."
"I admit-it seems strange to say it-I was so crazy about Serge I didn't want anyone else to be cooped up in a telephone booth singing with him in my place."
"I recall climbing the Albert Memorial as a dare, Winston Churchill's funeral in 1965, and the flowers at Kensington Palace following the death of Lady Di."
"When John went to America with another girl, what should have been a disaster for me was the thing that made me do something for the first time in my life, because I had my baby, Kate, to support. So I went to France."
"When Ma died I found she had a folder of all my paintings, and amongst them was a piece of cardboard, on which I had stuck Cliff Richard, in bathing trunks. Audacious!"
"When Serge died I put Monkey in with him in the box to make him feel less lonely and to comfort the children."
"When we get to heaven, perhaps it will be Monkey there, with his terrible jockey cap and one eye gone."
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[The controversial and ill-fated Italian edition was published from 1969 through 1971, and racked up what were at the time records for indecency fines, court-ordered shutdowns, etc. All that fuss over a little music/culture mag... run by degenerates with criminal pasts. Anyway, their best cover ever is the infamous Birkin cover]
