The actress Charlotte Valandrey, consecrated by the film “Rouge Baiser” in 1985 and who had made public her HIV status and her heart transplant problems, died Wednesday at the age of 53, her agent told AFP. She had revealed her HIV status in 2005 with her autobiography “Love in the blood”, a big bookstore success (180,000 sales) then adapted into a TV movie. Her triple therapy had exhausted her heart and she had to undergo a transplant in 2003, which made her the first HIV-positive heart transplant recipient in France.
Recently, she had announced on social networks that her second heart was coming to an end and that she needed a new transplant. “Waiting for my 3rd”she wrote on Instagram on June 8. “On June 14, Charlotte had to have emergency surgery to replace her ‘second-hand heart’ as she called it, but this new transplant did not take, this third heart did not live”explained his daughter, his sister and his father in a statement sent to AFP.
Born on November 29, 1968 in Paris, daughter of a calculation software developer father and a pianist mother, Anne-Charlotte Pascal, whose real name was, started out in cinema at the age of 16, in the film “Rouge Baiser” (1985 ) by Vera Belmont. The role of Nadia, a young rebellious militant in the Young Communists and seeing her ideal waver after a romantic encounter (Lambert Wilson) in France during the Cold War, earned her the Silver Bear for Best Actress in Berlin.
She was not 18 when she learned that she had contracted HIV. With a “gothic prince”, member of a famous rock band, she will say. She kept her seropositivity silent until 2005 and the publication of her autobiography. “The disease, this bitch, I kept her at a distance”she confided to L’Express.
She is not selected for “White Wedding” (1989), after having shared the secret of her illness with the director. His filmography is then far from the glory that he was promised. His career will be mainly on television, playing from 1991 to 2000 in the series “Les Cordier, judge et cop” (up to 11.4 million viewers) or in “Tomorrow belongs to us” (2017-2019).
Admittedly, she bounced back on television by playing from 1991 to 2000 in the series “Les Cordier, judge et cop” (up to 11.4 million viewers) or in “Tomorrow belongs to us” (2017-2019). But will never have the career to which she seemed promised.