ane Birkin’s music echoed around the streets of Paris on Monday as the London-born singer and actress’s family and friends attended her funeral in the French capital.
A crowd built up around the church of Saint-Roch in the morning, as hundreds of fans joined film legends and family members to bid farewell.
Outside, tearful fans waving banners marked with “Jane Forever” and “Thank you Jane Birkin” watched the ceremony on a giant screen.
Birkin’s songs, including “La Javanaise”, played through speakers across the French capital’s first arrondissement.
“I already feel the vacuum she is leaving. This is my mother, our mother,” Birkin’s daughter, the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, told mourners in the church.
“Mother, thank you for not being ordinary and reasonable,” her other daughter, the actress and singer Lou Doillon, said during the ceremony.
Those invited to the Saint-Roch funeral included film star Catherine Deneuve, singer Vanessa Paradis and first Lady Brigitte Macron.
AP
Other mourners included singers Alain Souchon, Etienne Daho, who composed her last album, and Matthieu Chedid.
Recalling the Anglo-French showbusiness star who died on Sunday, July 16 singer Etienne Daho said before the service: “My Jane, thank you for your talent.
‘Your elegant and natural beauty, your pungent, macabre, and British humour, accompanied our gloomy adolescence. We wanted to be you, or Serge.”
Mr Daho recalled others who had died, including Mr Gainsbourg and Ms Birkin’s eldest daughter, Kate Berry.
Mr Daho said: “You will find your parents, Kate, Serge, your friends and your dogs. And we will miss you terribly.”
Marianne Faithfull, another English singer who adopted Paris as her home, posted the words: “My dearest Jane is gone.”
Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, arrives to Jane Birkin’s funerals ceremony
/ AP
Hit songs – notably from the 1969 studio album Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg – were played from giant speakers outside Saint-Roch.
Ms Birkin had fought a “fierce battle” against cancer before her death.
She had described her leukaemia – which she was diagnosed with in 1998 – as a “not very painful cancer,” but in May she cancelled a serious of concerts when it got worse.
She said at the time: “I have always been a great optimist, and I realise that I still need a little time to be able again on stage and with you”.
Ms Birkin was best known as the former lover of Mr Gainsbourg, whom she first met in 1969 while co-starring in the French satirical romantic comedy Slogan.
Ms Birkin was 21 at the time, and had moved to France with her toddler daughter, Kate Barry, after a brief marriage to the James Bond composer, John Barry.
Jane Birkin, actor and singer, dies aged 76.
Ms Birkin and Gainsbourg’s sexually explicit song, Je t’aime… moi non plus (I love you, nor me) was a worldwide hit, reaching Number One in the UK Charts.
This was despite it being banned from a number of stations, because it was considered too risqué.
French President Emmanuel Macron described Ms Birkin as “a complete artist, her voice was as sweet as her convictions were ardent. Her legacy to us is songs and images that that will not leave us.”
His wife Brigitte was amogn those to attend the funeral ceremony.
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