This October 25, 2022, Annie Girardot would have been 91 years old. But her destiny will be different, she left in 2011, as a result of Alzheimer’s disease from which she had suffered for several years. Huge actress with a career long underestimated by French cinema, she had a daughter with the actor of Rocco and his brothers, Renato Salvadori. On the airwaves of Europe 1 eleven years ago, she returned to her mother’s last moments, between modesty and sincerity.
“It went superbly well. She was with me and with my daughter. She closed her eyes, she said ‘goodbye’ to us and she left peacefully“, said Giulia Salvatori. “It’s the most beautiful thing that could have happened to him. It’s been very hard for more than ten years, and you can see in his face that it’s a relief. It may be hard to say, but I feel calm because she is no longer in pain“, she had declared.
In his book Annie Girardot, the memory of my mother (Michel Lafon editions), Giulia Salvatori returned to the suffering caused by Alzheimer’s disease, for the patients as well as for those around them: “People with Alzheimer’s fall into another world, their world. It’s hard to live for loved ones but the only thing to do is to adapt to this world, to try to enter it to communicate. ” The great actress lived in a specialized institution with her brother, who also suffered from the same disease. “Their rooms are directly opposite. Jeannot is older, but he is less affected than Mum. He always has an eye on his little sister, protects her. Both talk about Magi, their mother“, said at the time the daughter of the artist.
I don’t know if I missed French cinema…
From the 1950s, Annie Girardot toured with the biggest names in French and Italian cinema and won the César for best actress in 1977 for Doctor Francoise Gailland. She showed up beautifully The Pianist by Michael Haneke, winning the César for best supporting role, which she had already won for Wretched by Claude Lelouch. We will remember her tears and her moving speech when she came to collect this prize on stage in 1996: “I don’t know if French cinema missed me, but French cinema missed me madly, desperately, painfully. Your testimony makes me think that maybe, I mean maybe, I’m not quite dead yet..”