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SHE was the English star of the Swinging Sixties who caused a scandal with the erotic French duet Je T’aime, recorded with lover Serge Gainsbourg.
But Jane Birkin, who moved to France in 1969, has died at her Paris home aged 76.
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The London-born actress and inspiration for the luxury Birkin bag was found by her carer yesterday, according to French media.
President Emmanuel Macron has paid tribute, tweeting: “Because she embodied freedom, because she sang the most beautiful words of our language, Jane Birkin was a French icon.”
Menna Rawlings, the British ambassador to France, described the actress and singer as “the most French of British artists”.
Jane said in 2006: “Paris became my home. I’ve been adopted here. They like my accent.”
The daughter of stage actress Judy Campbell and Royal Navy lieutenant commander David Birkin, who had been a spy in World War Two, Jane was raised in Chelsea.
She was educated at the Miss Ironside school in Kensington before attending boarding school.
Describing herself as a “shy English girl”, Jane was bullied for her elfin looks and said: “I suffered a lot because of my physique, especially at boarding school.
“The others said I was half boy, half girl. I had no breasts, not even a developing bosom. It was horrible.”
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At 17, she met James Bond composer John Barry and they married two years later, in 1965.
Her relationship with John led to her first taste of notoriety, when she starred in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 movie Blow-Up, now a cult classic, where she caused a stir by becoming the first actress to show pubic hair in mainstream cinema.
Just 19 at the time, she later said she only stripped because John had teased that she wouldn’t have the courage to go naked on set.
Jane went on to star in cult film Kaleidoscope and psychedelic movie Wonderwall, once again filming nude scenes.
Despite being a model, Jane was insecure as a young bride and kept eyeliner under her pillow.
“I didn’t dare show my bare face,” she once recalled.
“Because in those times we wanted to look like Jean Shrimpton — we wanted to have big eyes with eyelashes all the way round.
“I thought that if John saw me with my little eyes in the middle of the night, he’d be disappointed.”
Jane and John’s daughter Kate was born in 1967 but after the composer’s movie career took him to the US a year later, the couple divorced.
Despite having no grasp of the language, Jane auditioned for the lead role in 1969 French movie Slogan, opposite the controversial singer and actor Serge Gainsbourg, and landed the part.
The pair duetted on the film’s theme, La Chanson de Slogan, which became the first of many musical collaborations.
It was also the start of a passionate and often tumultuous romance with the French pop star, 18 years her senior, which lasted 12 years and produced her second daughter, actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, 51.
Initially Jane and Gainsbourg hated each other, with Jane telling brother Andrew: “He’s meant to be my lover but he’s so arrogant and snobbish and he absolutely despises me.”
But after a night of dancing and drinking, they began dating and, after a trip to Venice, she revealed: “I fell head over heels.
“He took away all the pain of it having not worked with John, and I think I helped him get over Brigitte Bardot leaving him.”
The couple’s infamously erotic track Je T’aime . . . Moi Non Plus (I Love you . . . Me Neither), released in 1969, was originally written for Gains-bourg’s former lover Bardot but, fuelled by “jealousy”, Jane insisted she sang it.
Naked on set
The sexually explicit track, backed by Jane’s ecstatic moans, caused shockwaves around Europe and was condemned by the Vatican and banned by radio stations in Italy, Spain and the UK.
In France it was sold in a plain wrapper, and even then only to those aged over 21.
When rumours spread that the song had been recorded by placing microphones under their bed, Gainsbourg quipped: “Thank goodness it wasn’t, otherwise I hope it would have been a long-playing record.”
The passionate relationship often turned violent.
Jane described Gainsbourg as “a very difficult man to live with” and claimed during recording sessions that he’d scream at her and beat her with a ruler if she was not performing to his liking.
On one occasion, after a public fight, she jumped into the River Seine as a grand gesture to cool his anger — then “clambered out and we gaily walked home arm in arm”.
They collaborated on Gainsbourg’s 1971 album Histoire de Melody Nelson, and the controversial 1975 movie Je T’aime Moi Non Plus, which was banned in the UK for subversive sex scenes.
The role saw her nominated for a César Award, France’s equivalent of the Oscars.
She received two more nominations during her career.
She also starred as Brigitte Bardot’s lover in 1973 movie If Don Juan Was A Woman.
By 1980, Gainsbourg’s drinking and violence had escalated and Jane called it quits.
But she remained fiercely loyal toward her ex until his death in 1991, defending him against allegations of sexual harassment made by singer Lio, who described him as the Harvey “Weinstein of songs.”
She also defended the song Lemon Incest (Un Zeste De Citron), the duet Gainsbourg sang with his then 13-year-old daughter Charlotte — and the video, which saw the pair of them lying on a bed.
She said: “I think the point with Lemon Incest was that he wanted to put Charlotte on a pedestal, but he was a very shy man.
“He could never take anyone in his arms like some fathers do. His way of saying things was to write as beautiful a song as he could about how he loved her.
Stupid accident
“He couldn’t resist the temptation of making a pun between ‘incest’ and ‘zest’. He knew perfectly well that it would shock people but that was secondary, in a way.”
Although Jane moved on to a relationship with director Jacques Doillon — who directed her in the 1984 movie La Pirate — she remained close to her ex.
When her third daughter, Lou Doillon, was born in 1982, Gainsbourg sent a basket of baby clothes from “Papa Deux.”
When the French singer died in 1991 Jane was inconsolable, spending three days with his body and burying her favourite stuffed toy, “Munckey”, in his coffin.
Shortly afterwards, she split with Doillon, largely over her continued devotion to Gainsbourg.
Asked by The Times last year about their unconventional lifestyle, she said of Serge: “I don’t know how easy it was for the children to have a mother who was naked in magazines and a father burning 500-franc notes. I hope one did some things right.”
There was further tragedy in 2013, when her daughter Kate died after falling from a window of her fourth floor Paris apartment.
The 46-year-old photographer, who had a son Roman, now 36, had battled a lifelong addiction to alcohol and drugs.
Suicide was suspected but not proved.
The death devastated Jane and, in a 2017 interview, daughter Charlotte said “our whole family collapsed”.
She added that her mum was “gone for years, really gone . . . She wouldn’t get up. If you told her to come over, she would, but she didn’t talk — not to my children or to anyone.”
It took seven years before Jane could write about Kate’s death, penning the 2020 song Cigarettes, which includes the line “Ma fille s’est foutue en l’air” meaning “my daughter f***ed herself up” and asks: “Had she opened the window to clear the cigarette smoke?
“Perhaps it was a stupid accident. Who knows?”
Famed for her effortless style, Jane inspired a bestselling designer bag after sitting next to Jean-Louis Dumas, the CEO of French fashion house Hermes, on a flight.
Subversive sex scenes
Away from her music and acting, Jane was involved in humanitarian causes, including working with Amnesty International and Unicef.
In 2022, she and Charlotte took part in a protest video with stars including Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche, which saw them cutting off locks of their hair in support of demonstrators in Iran.
She was awarded an OBE by King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, at Buckingham Palace in 2002.
She later said the royal told her that he was “pleased I was recognised by this country at last”.
Jane continued to record new music and tour until she suffered a stroke in September 2021.
She also featured in documentary Jane By Charlotte, directed by her daughter.
But as ill health plagued her, she cancelled a string of concerts due to take place in May in Paris, telling fans: “I’ve always been a big optimist, and I realise that it still takes me a little while to be able to be on stage again and with you.“I love being with you so much.”
Sadly, the English rose who bloomed into a French national treasure has left the stage for ever.
Birth of the Birkin bag
FASHION icon Jane inspired a best-selling designer bag after sitting next to Hermes boss Jean-Louis Dumas on a flight.
Seeing the star’s possessions tumbling from the handwoven straw basket she carried everywhere, Dumas asked why she did not use a more practical bag and she told him she could not find one to her taste.
He vowed to design a supple leather weekend bag, which he launched in 1984 and called the Birkin.
The elegant design features two rolled handles, a flap top and a lock.
Each one has a unique code indicating the year it was made, the workshop where it was crafted, and the artisan who lovingly produced it.
The Birkin bag initially sold for £1,500 but would set you back £7,600 today.
The top-of-the-range crocodile and diamond-encrusted design costs £150,000.
In 2022, Sotheby’s sold a Diamond Himalaya Birkin for £350,000.
Fans include Victoria Beckham, Kim Kardashian, Cardi B, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez, and the style still generates nearly a million searches online every month.
Read More on The US Sun
Jane revealed she stopped using her Birkin because she tended to overload it, adding: “They’re bloody heavy. I’m going to have an operation for tendonitis in the shoulder.”
In 2015, she asked Hermes to rename the style over reports that the leather was acquired through animal cruelty, but withdrew her objections after the company reassured her of their methods.
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