“Never complain”: Jane Birkin “crippled in pain”, why she hid everything for years

Adopted by France and the French for almost 60 years, Jane Birkin never let go of this little British side that characterized her so well. And in particular this motto of the royal family, which she had almost made her own: Never explain, never complain ! Never explain and never complain, that’s what she had decided more than twenty years ago when doctors found her to have leukemia.

From 1998, then again in 2013 when she was in remission, the ex-muse of Serge Gainsbourg had indeed had to fight against what she called a “little cancer“. Without talking about it in the media or almost, in private, discreetly. While all this is far from being a cakewalk.

“The disease that has often crippled her with pain, she has always swept her away with a ‘little cancer’ because you don’t talk about these things when you’re English and over 70, it’s common, isn’t it?“, tell our colleagues from ELLE magazine, who have dedicated a tribute issue to her. If she refuses to address the subject, her health problems are more serious over time.

His stroke in 2021, in particular, handicaps him a lot. But again, the singer does not want to complain. And especially for his three daughters, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lou Doillon and Kate Barry (who died in 2013): “I’m careful, my God, not to become a mother who complains on the phone, and the children put the device on speakerphone and go make themselves a cup of tea!“, she had joked.

Very poor health

However, his family had taken his health seriously: recently, his grandson Ben Attal (eldest of the union between Charlotte Gainsbourg and Yvan Attal) had explained that he spent time with her because she was not in very good shape. At the Césars, it was her granddaughter Alice who had accompanied her. And in her daily life, the singer was followed by caregivers.

It was also during the first evening without them that the singer and actress lost her life: as her daughters announced in a press release, it was alone, as she had decided, that she flew away.

She will be buried on July 24 in Paris, probably near her daughter Kate Barry and in the presence of the rest of her family, including her daughters and six grandchildren.