It’s an episode of her life that she will never forget, a moment when love and excess became one. In the early 1970s, Jane Birkin, a young actress recognized in France since her performance in The swimming pool with Romy Schneider, meets Serge Gainsbourg. The beginning of a crazy passionwho will give birth to a little girl, Charlotte, but also of an abyss into which the singer falls.
Consumed by its excesses, in particular by an alcoholism which sometimes leaves him lying on the ground, and very violent with his wife, he ends up seeing her flee with her two daughters Kate Barry, 13 years old and born from a first union, and Charlotte, of course, who was only 9 years old. Aware of his actions, he had even spoken about it on television.
“Jane left because of me, I was doing too much abuse, I was going home completely pissed off, I was hitting him. When she yelled at me, I didn’t like it: two seconds too long and bam… she suffered with me but then it became an eternal affection….” he explained after their breakup. Jane Birkin, recently, had added: “There have been many crises. I got tired of being his thing.” Speaking of “scenes of violence“, in which “Gainsbourg gives him one or two“, she had however nuanced: “I stubbed out a cigarette on him. I did the same. I sent a cream pie, it was not to be done. I was agitated by alcohol (…) before that I had been humiliated“.
Despite everything, it’s difficult for them to really separate: once the love story is over, they had finally managed to create a beautiful friendship. Serge Gainsbourg had notably lived for 8 years with his ex-girlfriend, who had rebuilt her life with Jacques Doillon. He had even been named godfather to their daughter Lou, who has also become a singer and actress since.
In an interview at New Observer, she had also told her memories with the father of her half-sister. “Serge was always at home, between my father and my mother, I grew up with him, thinking very hard when he was finally going to let my parents love each other quietlyshe revealed. As a child, I amused him because I ran into him, I wasn’t afraid of him and at the same time, I was crazy about him. He was the Judas of my life and I wonder what he would think of my music… I was happy to play my album to Serge’s sister who told me that like him, I knew how to make melodies“.