Charlotte Gainsbourg: The Life Story Behind France's Artistic Star

Charlotte Gainsbourg was thirteen when she first appeared on screen, and she has spent the forty years since proving that she is more than the daughter of two famous people. She was born on 21 July 1971 in London, the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg, the French singer, songwriter and provocateur, and Jane Birkin, the English actress and singer who became a French icon, and her childhood was spent between London and Paris, between two languages, two cultures, and two kinds of fame. Her father was a genius and a scandal, her mother was a beauty and a muse, and Charlotte grew up in the middle of their story, watching, listening, and learning. She made her film debut at thirteen, she won a César at fourteen, she recorded a controversial song with her father at thirteen, and she has spent the rest of her life making work that is hers, in film and in music, in French and in English, and the work is serious, brave and original.

London, 1971: A Childhood Between Two Countries

Charlotte Gainsbourg was born in London in 1971, when her parents were at the height of their fame: Serge Gainsbourg had recorded Je t’aime… moi non plus with Jane Birkin in 1969, a song that was banned in several countries and that made them notorious, and Jane Birkin was a star in France, an Englishwoman who had become French by adoption. Charlotte grew up in Paris, in a house full of music, of artists, of smoke and of conversation, and she has described her childhood as both magical and difficult, a childhood in which her parents were famous, her father was often drunk, her mother was often absent, and the house was a place of creativity and of chaos. The childhood matters because it is the source of her work: she has spent her career playing women who are caught between two worlds, who are beautiful and damaged, who are watching and being watched, and the watching began at home.

The two countries, England and France, are the two halves of her identity. She speaks English and French, she acts in both languages, she sings in both, and she belongs to both and to neither, and the in-betweenness is visible in her performances, which often play women who are outsiders, who are English in France or French in England, and who are trying to find a home. The London birth is not a footnote; it is the foundation, and the Paris childhood is the other half, and the two halves together make an actress who can move between worlds, who can play Jane Eyre in English and a French woman in a Lars von Trier film, and who can do both with the same honesty.

Paroles et musique and Lemon Incest: The Thirteen-Year-Old

Gainsbourg made her film debut in 1984, at the age of thirteen, in Paroles et musique, directed by Élie Chouraqui, in which she played the daughter of a singer, a role that was close to her own life, and the performance was natural, unforced, and promising. In the same year she recorded Lemon Incest with her father, a song in which a father and daughter sing about their love, with lyrics that were deliberately provocative, and the song caused a scandal in France, because it seemed to suggest incest, and the scandal followed Charlotte for years. She has spoken about the song as a difficult memory, a thing she did as a child because her father asked her to, and a thing she would not do now, and the honesty is characteristic: she does not hide the past, she does not defend it, she simply tells the truth about it, and the truth is that she was thirteen, and her father was Serge Gainsbourg, and the combination was complicated.

The debut year matters because it shows how early the fame came, and how strange it was. A thirteen-year-old girl, the daughter of two famous people, acting in a film and singing a scandalous song with her father, is not a normal childhood, and Gainsbourg has spent her adult life making sense of it, in her work and in her interviews. The film debut was the beginning of a career, and the song was a scandal, and the two together are the portrait of a child who was famous before she was ready, and who had to grow up in public, and who did, with a grace that is remarkable.

L’effrontée and the First César

The role that made Gainsbourg a serious actress came in 1985, in L’effrontée, directed by Claude Miller, in which she played Charlotte, a thirteen-year-old girl who is bold, funny, and difficult, a girl who steals, who lies, who wants to be an actress, and who is, in many ways, a portrait of adolescence itself. The performance won her the César for Most Promising Actress, at the age of fourteen, and the award was a recognition that she was not just a famous child, but a real actress, a girl who could carry a film, who could make an audience laugh and cry, and who could play a character who is unlikeable and lovable at the same time. The film was a success in France, and it established Gainsbourg as a young actress to watch, and the watching has continued for forty years.

L’effrontée matters for another reason, which is that it gave Gainsbourg a reputation as an actress who plays difficult girls, difficult women, and who does it without vanity. The character is not pretty, she is not sweet, she is a girl who is trying to grow up, and Gainsbourg plays her with a honesty that is rare in a fourteen-year-old. The César was the proof, and the proof mattered, because it meant that the French film world took her seriously, not as Serge Gainsbourg’s daughter, but as Charlotte Gainsbourg, an actress, and the distinction, which she has fought for all her life, began with that award.

Jane Eyre and The Cement Garden: Growing Up on Screen

In 1993 Gainsbourg starred in The Cement Garden, directed by Andrew Birkin, her uncle, based on the novel by Ian McEwan, in which she played Julie, a teenage girl who, with her siblings, buries their dead mother in cement in the basement and tries to live without adults. The film is strange, it is disturbing, it is beautiful, and Gainsbourg’s performance is at the centre of it: she plays Julie as a girl who is becoming a woman, who is confused, who is angry, and who is trying to hold her family together, and the performance is mature, it is controlled, and it shows that the fourteen-year-old who won a César had become a serious young actress. The film was a critical success, and it showed that Gainsbourg could work in English, in a British film, with a difficult subject, and hold her own.

Three years later, in 1996, she played the title role in Jane Eyre, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë, in which she played Jane, a governess who falls in love with Mr Rochester, played by William Hurt. The role is one of the great roles in English literature, a plain, intelligent, passionate woman, and Gainsbourg played her with a quiet intensity that was widely praised. The film was a major production, and the role proved that she could carry a classic, that she could play a heroine, and that her English, her London birth, her bilingual identity, made her the right actress for Jane Eyre, a woman who belongs nowhere and who finds her home in herself. The two films together, The Cement Garden and Jane Eyre, are the portrait of a young actress growing up on screen, from a difficult teenager to a serious leading lady.

21 Grams, The Science of Sleep and the American Work

In 2003 Gainsbourg appeared in 21 Grams, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, in which she played Mary, the wife of a man who receives a heart transplant, and the film, with Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro, was a major American production, and her part in it, though supporting, showed that she could work in Hollywood, in English, in a film that was serious and difficult. The film was nominated for Academy Awards, and Gainsbourg’s performance was praised for its restraint, for the way she played a woman who is grieving, who is angry, and who is trying to live. The American work continued with The Science of Sleep in 2006, directed by Michel Gondry, in which she played Stéphanie, a woman who falls in love with a man who cannot distinguish dreams from reality, and the film is whimsical, it is sad, it is beautiful, and Gainsbourg’s performance is the anchor, the real woman in a world of dreams.

The American films matter because they show that Gainsbourg is not confined to French cinema, that she can work in English, in Hollywood, in independent film, and be as good as she is in French. The Science of Sleep is a particularly good example: the film is in French and English, it is about dreams, it is about love, and Gainsbourg plays Stéphanie as a woman who is patient, who is kind, and who is trying to understand a man who is lost, and the patience is the performance. The two films together prove that she is an international actress, a woman who belongs to both French and English cinema, and who is at home in both.

Antichrist, Melancholia and Lars von Trier

The most difficult and most celebrated chapter of Gainsbourg’s film career came with the Danish director Lars von Trier, with whom she made three films: Antichrist in 2009, Melancholia in 2011, and Nymphomaniac in 2013. In Antichrist she played She, a woman who, after the death of her child, goes with her husband, played by Willem Dafoe, to a cabin in the woods, where the film becomes a horror, a nightmare, a study of grief and violence, and Gainsbourg’s performance won her the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is shocking, it is violent, it is disturbing, and Gainsbourg’s performance is fearless, she gives everything, she is naked, she is terrified, she is angry, and the fearlessness is the point: she trusts von Trier, she trusts the film, and she lets the audience see a woman in pain, without holding back.

In Melancholia she played Claire, the sister of Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, a woman who is trying to hold her family together as a planet approaches the Earth and the world ends, and the performance is quieter, it is more restrained, it is a woman who is afraid and who is trying to be brave, and Gainsbourg plays her with a dignity that is moving. In Nymphomaniac she played Joe, a woman who tells the story of her sexual life to a man who finds her beaten in an alley, and the film is long, it is explicit, it is controversial, and Gainsbourg’s performance is again fearless, a woman who tells her story without shame and without apology. The three films together are a portrait of an actress who is willing to go further than almost any other actress of her generation, and who does it not for shock, but for truth.

5:55, IRM, Rest: The Music Career

Gainsbourg is also a singer, and her music career is as serious as her film career. Her first albums, Charlotte for Ever in 1986, written by her father, were a child singing her father’s songs, and the adult music began in 2006 with 5:55, an album made with the French band Air and with Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, a record that is elegant, melancholic, and beautiful, and that showed that Gainsbourg could sing as an adult, in her own voice, not her father’s. The album was a success in France, and it established her as a singer in her own right, a woman who makes music that is hers, not her father’s, and the distinction, which she has fought for all her life, is audible in every song.

She followed 5:55 with IRM in 2009, an album made with Beck, the American musician, a record that is stranger, more experimental, and more personal, and then with Stage Whisper in 2011, and with Rest in 2017, an album written after the death of her half-sister Kate Barry, a photographer who died in 2013, and Rest is a record about grief, about loss, about the difficulty of going on, and the songs, including Deadly Valentine, are among the best she has made. The music career matters because it shows that Gainsbourg is an artist, not just an actress, a woman who needs to make music as well as to act, and who makes it with the same honesty, the same bravery, and the same refusal to be easy.

Jane par Charlotte and the Mother

In 2021 Gainsbourg directed Jane par Charlotte, a documentary about her mother, Jane Birkin, a film in which she interviews her mother, films her at home, in Paris, in Brittany, and tries to understand the woman who raised her. The film is intimate, it is tender, it is sometimes painful, and it is a daughter’s attempt to know her mother as a person, not as a star, and the attempt is moving, because Jane Birkin was a star, and she was also a mother, and the two are difficult to separate. The film was praised for its honesty, for the way it shows a mother and daughter talking, listening, and trying to understand each other, and it is one of the most personal films Gainsbourg has made, because it is not a performance, it is a conversation.

Jane Birkin died in July 2023, at the age of seventy-six, and her death was a moment of grief for France, for England, and for Gainsbourg, who lost her mother and who had made a film about her two years earlier. The film, Jane par Charlotte, became, after her mother’s death, a memorial, a record of a woman who was loved, and a daughter’s love letter to her. Gainsbourg has continued to work since, in film and in music, and the work is still hers, still brave, still honest, and the mother is still part of it, in the voice, in the face, in the way she moves, and the audience that watches her now sees both women, the daughter and the mother, and the seeing is the point.

Family, Yvan Attal and the Private Life

Gainsbourg has been in a relationship with the actor and director Yvan Attal since 1991, and the couple have three children, Ben, Alice and Joe, and they have worked together, including in Ma femme est une actrice in 2001, directed by Attal, in which Gainsbourg played a version of herself, an actress married to a jealous man. The relationship is one of the longest in French cinema, and it is a partnership of two artists who understand each other’s work, who support each other, and who keep their private life private. Gainsbourg rarely discusses her family in interviews, and she does not share her private life on social media, preferring to let the work speak, and the choice is a statement: the actress is not the gossip, and the gossip is not the art.

She remains close to her half-sister Lou Doillon, the daughter of Jane Birkin and Jacques Doillon, who is herself an actress and singer, and the two sisters are a reminder that the Birkin family is a family of artists, of women who make work, who sing, who act, and who do it on their own terms. Gainsbourg is now in her mid-fifties, she has a career that spans forty years, she has a César, a Cannes Best Actress award, albums, films, and a documentary, and she has the freedom to choose her next work, and the choices she has made suggest that she will keep choosing difficult roles, keep making music, and keep building a career that is hers.

The Daughter, the Actress and the Artist

Gainsbourg’s place in French culture is unique, and it is a place that no one else occupies. She is the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, and she is also Charlotte Gainsbourg, an actress, a singer, a director, and the two identities are both true, and the tension between them is the story of her life. She has spent forty years making the second identity real, by working, by taking difficult roles, by making music, by directing a film about her mother, and the work is the proof. The audience that watches her now sees an artist, not a daughter, and the seeing is the achievement, and it is an achievement that took a lifetime.

Nymphomaniac: Joe’s Story

Nymphomaniac, directed by Lars von Trier and released in 2013 in two volumes, is the third film Gainsbourg made with von Trier, and it is the most ambitious of the three: she plays Joe, a woman who is found beaten in an alley by Seligman, played by Stellan Skarsgård, and who tells him the story of her sexual life, from her childhood to her adulthood, in chapters, each one a story about desire, about love, about loss, and about the difficulty of being a woman who wants more than the world allows. The film is long, it is explicit, it is controversial, and Gainsbourg’s performance is the centre of it: she plays Joe as a woman who is telling the truth, who is not ashamed, who is not asking for sympathy, and who is trying to understand her own life by telling it. The storytelling structure, a woman telling her life to a stranger, is a classic one, and Gainsbourg makes it feel new, because she tells the story without vanity, without holding back, and with a directness that is rare.

The film matters because it shows Gainsbourg’s fearlessness in its purest form: she is naked, she is explicit, she is playing a woman whose sexuality is the subject of the film, and she does it without ever making the audience feel that she is being exploited, because the performance is hers, the choices are hers, and the character is hers. The film divided critics, as von Trier’s films always do, and some of the criticism was harsh, but nobody doubted Gainsbourg’s commitment, and the role proved that she was willing to go further than almost any other actress of her generation, and to trust a director who is famous for pushing his actors to the edge. The trust is the point: Gainsbourg trusts von Trier, von Trier trusts Gainsbourg, and the audience trusts both, because the work is honest.

The two volumes of Nymphomaniac are also a portrait of a woman ageing, of Joe as a young woman, played in the early chapters by Stacy Martin, and as an older woman, played by Gainsbourg, and the two performances together are a single character, a woman who grows, who changes, who makes mistakes, and who keeps going. Gainsbourg’s Joe is the older woman, the woman who has lived, who has loved, who has lost, and who is telling her story to a stranger because she needs to be heard, and the need to be heard is the performance. The film is not easy, it is not comfortable, and it is not meant to be; it is a film about desire, about the difficulty of desire, and about a woman who refuses to apologise for wanting, and Gainsbourg’s refusal is the bravest thing about it.

My Take:

The first thing to say about Charlotte Gainsbourg is that she was famous before she was ready, and she spent the rest of her life catching up with the fame. She was thirteen when she acted in a film and sang a scandalous song with her father, and the fame came too early, and it came in a strange form, and she had to grow up in public, and she did, with a grace that is remarkable. The grace is visible in her work: she does not hide the past, she does not defend it, she tells the truth about it, and the truth is that she was a child, and her father was Serge Gainsbourg, and the combination was complicated. The honesty about the past is the foundation of her acting, because an actress who can be honest about her own life can be honest about a character’s life, and Gainsbourg is honest in every role.

The second thing is the César at fourteen, and what it meant. L’effrontée gave her the César for Most Promising Actress, and the award was a recognition that she was a real actress, not just a famous child, and the recognition mattered, because it meant that the French film world took her seriously. The performance is still worth watching: she plays a thirteen-year-old girl who is bold, funny, difficult, and the performance is natural, it is unforced, and it shows a talent that was already fully formed. The César was not a fluke; it was the first of many recognitions, and the many recognitions together are the portrait of a career that has lasted forty years, which is a rare thing for a child actress, and a credit to her discipline and her talent.

The third thing is the von Trier films, and the fearlessness they required. Antichrist, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac are films that ask their leading actress to give everything, to be naked, to be terrified, to be angry, to be explicit, and Gainsbourg gave everything, without holding back, without asking the audience to forgive her, and without asking for sympathy. The fearlessness is not about nudity or shock; it is about truth, about a woman who is willing to show grief, to show desire, to show pain, and to let the audience see it without smoothing it out. The Cannes Best Actress award for Antichrist was the recognition, but the performance is the thing, and it remains one of the bravest performances in modern cinema.

The fourth thing is the music, and how it is different from the acting. Gainsbourg’s albums, 5:55, IRM, Rest, are not the work of an actress who sings; they are the work of a singer, a woman who makes music that is hers, that is elegant, melancholic, and personal. The music is quieter than the films, it is more intimate, and it shows a different side of her: the woman who sings about grief, about loss, about love, in a voice that is soft and clear, and the softness is the point. The music career matters because it proves that Gainsbourg is an artist, not just an actress, a woman who needs to make music as well as to act, and who makes it with the same honesty as her films.

The fifth thing is Rest, and the grief behind it. The album was written after the death of her half-sister Kate Barry, a photographer who died in 2013, and the songs are about loss, about the difficulty of going on, about the way grief changes a person, and Gainsbourg sings them without sentimentality, with a clarity that makes the grief bearable. The album is one of her best, because it is personal, because it is honest, and because it shows that music can be a way of surviving, a way of making sense of a loss that does not make sense. The grief is not the whole album, but it is the foundation, and the foundation is deep, and the audience that listens to Rest hears a woman who has lost someone she loved, and who is still singing.

The sixth thing is Jane par Charlotte, and the daughter’s attempt to know her mother. The documentary is a film in which Gainsbourg interviews her mother, Jane Birkin, films her at home, and tries to understand her as a person, not as a star, and the attempt is moving, because it is a daughter asking her mother who she is, and the mother answering, slowly, honestly, and with humour. The film is intimate, it is tender, and it is one of the most personal films Gainsbourg has made, because it is not a performance, it is a conversation, and the conversation is the point. Jane Birkin’s death in 2023 made the film a memorial, and the memorial is a love letter, and the love is visible in every frame.

The seventh thing is the bilingual identity, and how it shapes the work. Gainsbourg speaks English and French, she acts in both, she sings in both, and she belongs to both and to neither, and the in-betweenness is visible in her performances. Jane Eyre is an English heroine, played by a woman born in London, and the Englishness is real, and the Frenchness is real too, and the two together make an actress who can move between worlds. The bilingualism is not a trick; it is a life, a childhood between London and Paris, and the life is the source of the acting, and the acting is the proof that a person can belong to two places at once, and can be at home in both.

The eighth thing is the body, and how Gainsbourg uses it. She is a beautiful woman, and French cinema has always known what to do with beautiful women, which is to photograph them, and Gainsbourg has been photographed, but her best work uses her beauty as a problem rather than as a gift. In Antichrist her beauty is a source of pain, in Melancholia it is a source of dignity, in Nymphomaniac it is a source of desire and of shame, and in Jane Eyre it is almost irrelevant, because Jane is plain, and Gainsbourg plays her plainness with a honesty that is rare. The beauty is not the performance; the performance is what she does with the beauty, and what she does is to make it human, to make it complicated, and to refuse to let it be simple.

The ninth thing is the voice, and how it carries the performance. Gainsbourg’s voice is soft, it is clear, it is bilingual, and it can be funny and sad in the same sentence. In her music the voice is the instrument, and she sings with a softness that is intimate, that makes the audience lean in, that makes the listener feel as if she is singing to them alone. In her films the voice is the character: Jane Eyre’s voice is quiet and firm, Claire’s voice in Melancholia is tired and brave, Joe’s voice in Nymphomaniac is direct and unashamed, and each voice is different, and each voice is hers. The voice is the thread that runs through the career, from the thirteen-year-old singing with her father to the woman singing Rest, and the thread is unbroken.

The tenth thing is the privacy, and the boundary she keeps. Gainsbourg has been famous since she was thirteen, and she has learned how to live with fame, how to keep her private life private, and how to let the work speak. She does not share her family on social media, she does not discuss her relationships in detail, and she keeps the boundary, and the boundary is healthy, because it means that the audience sees the work, not the life. The woman who plays characters who hide things, who lie, who live double lives, is herself a private person, and the privacy is not a secret, it is a choice, and the choice is respected by the audience, or should be, because it is the choice that makes the work possible.

The eleventh thing is the partnership with Yvan Attal, and what it means. Attal is an actor and director, they have been together since 1991, they have three children, they have worked together, and the partnership is one of the longest in French cinema. A partnership between two artists is difficult, because both are watched, both are judged, and both are away, and Gainsbourg and Attal have made it work, by supporting each other, by working together, and by keeping their private life private. The partnership is a foundation, and the foundation holds, even when the career pulls hard, and the holding is the point.

The twelfth thing is the father, and the long shadow, and how Gainsbourg escaped it. Serge Gainsbourg was a genius, he was a provocateur, he was a scandal, and his daughter could have lived in his shadow, or rebelled against it, or traded on it, and she did none of those things. She made her own music, she made her own films, she won her own César, she won her own Cannes award, and the work is hers, not his. The escape was not a rebellion; it was a slow, patient building of a career that was her own, and the building took decades, and the decades are the proof. The father is still part of her story, and he should be, because he was her father, but the story is hers, and the audience that watches her now sees Charlotte Gainsbourg, not Serge Gainsbourg’s daughter.

The thirteenth thing is the age, and the maturity of the later work. Gainsbourg is now in her mid-fifties, and her best work, the von Trier films, the album Rest, the documentary about her mother, came when she was in her forties and fifties, and the maturity is visible: the performances are deeper, the music is more personal, the directing is more honest, and the woman is more herself. The younger Gainsbourg, the fourteen-year-old who won a César, could not have made Rest, and the older Gainsbourg could not have played L’effrontée with the same freshness, and the career is a portrait of a woman growing older and getting better, which is the opposite of what usually happens to actresses, and which is a credit to her discipline and her curiosity.

The fourteenth thing is the range, and how wide it is. Jane Eyre and Joe in Nymphomaniac have nothing in common: one is a plain, passionate governess in nineteenth-century England, the other is a woman telling the story of her sexual life in modern Denmark, and the same actress played both, and played both well. The range is not a trick; it is a discipline, the discipline of a woman who trained by working, who learned by doing, and who never lets one role bleed into the next. The audience that watches Jane Eyre and then watches Nymphomaniac is watching two different women, and the fact that they are the same actress is the point. Gainsbourg’s range is the range of a serious artist, and it is rare.

The fifteenth thing is the future, and what it might hold. Gainsbourg is in her mid-fifties, she has a career that spans forty years, she has a César, a Cannes award, albums, films, and a documentary, and she has the freedom to choose, and the choices she has made suggest that she will keep choosing difficult roles, keep making music, and keep building a career that is hers. The audience should expect more films, more music, more of the honesty and the bravery that have marked her career, and the expectation is a happy one, because Gainsbourg has earned it. The daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin became Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the name is now her own, and the career is now her own.

The sixteenth thing is the influence, and how it is already visible. Young French actresses cite Gainsbourg as an influence, young singers see that a woman can make music that is personal and elegant, young directors see that an actress can be brave, can take risks, can trust a director like von Trier, and the seeing is the influence. The influence is not a matter of copying; it is a matter of permission, of Gainsbourg giving other artists permission to be difficult, to be honest, to be themselves. The permission is the gift, and it is a gift that will last longer than any single film, because it changes what other artists believe is possible.

The seventeenth thing, and the last, is the lesson. Gainsbourg’s career says that a child who is famous too early can still become an artist, that a daughter of famous parents can still become herself, and that the work, done patiently over decades, is the way. She acted at thirteen, she won a César at fourteen, she sang with her father, she played Jane Eyre, she worked with von Trier, she made Rest, she directed a film about her mother, and each step was a step toward becoming Charlotte Gainsbourg. The lesson is not that talent will always be recognised, but that the work, done with honesty and with bravery, is its own reward, and that the reward, when it comes, is deserved. Gainsbourg’s reward has come, in the form of awards, of a global audience, of a career that is hers, and the audience that watches her now knows that it is watching a great artist, and that the greatness was earned, in London, in Paris, and in every film and every song where she became herself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are Charlotte Gainsbourg’s parents?

She is the daughter of the French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg and the English actress and singer Jane Birkin, and she was born in London on 21 July 1971, growing up between London and Paris.

What film won Charlotte Gainsbourg a César at fourteen?

She won the César for Most Promising Actress for L’effrontée, directed by Claude Miller in 1985, in which she played Charlotte, a bold and difficult thirteen-year-old girl who wants to be an actress.

What is Charlotte Gainsbourg’s role in Antichrist?

She played She, a woman who, after the death of her child, goes with her husband to a cabin in the woods, in Lars von Trier’s film Antichrist from 2009. She won the Best Actress award at Cannes for the performance.

What albums has Charlotte Gainsbourg released?

Her adult music includes 5:55 from 2006, made with Air and Jarvis Cocker, IRM from 2009, made with Beck, and Rest from 2017, written after the death of her half-sister Kate Barry, which includes the song Deadly Valentine.

What is Jane par Charlotte?

Jane par Charlotte is a documentary Gainsbourg directed in 2021 about her mother, Jane Birkin, in which she interviews her mother at home in Paris and Brittany. Jane Birkin died in July 2023, and the film became a memorial to her.

Who did Charlotte Gainsbourg play in Jane Eyre?

She played the title role of Jane Eyre in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1996 film based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë, a governess who falls in love with Mr Rochester, played by William Hurt.