Child prodigy: cinema and chanson: Charlotte Gainsbourg turns 50

Charlotte Gainsbourg has been walking between worlds for many years. Her main job is acting, but her great love is music.

And so the French actress affords herself the luxury of bringing out an album every now and then, like a few years ago with her song collection “Rest”, of which she said: “That’s me, without a filter”. Charlotte Gainsbourg celebrates her 50th birthday today.

She is the daughter of chanson legend Serge Gainsbourg and actress Jane Birkin, now has three children with actor Yvan Attal, and has caused a sensation in recent years with provocative films such as “Nymphomaniac” or “Melancholia” by director Lars von Trier.

Born on July 21, 1971 in London, Gainsbourg was in front of the camera from an early age. In 1984 she made her screen debut alongside Catherine Deneuve in “Paroles et musiques”, and around the same time she tried her hand at singing, recording the first chansons her father had written. And with the disreputable duet “Lemon Incest” she earned her reputation as a precocious nymph. Films like “The Cheeky Girl” and “The Little Thief” cemented their early fame. In Agnès Varda’s love story “Die Zeit mit Julien” she played together with her mother Jane Birkin.

In the 1990s, Charlotte Gainsbourg concentrated on acting, perhaps triggered by the early death of her father in 1991. With “Merci la vie” she had a huge success in France in the same year, followed by “The Cement Garden”, based on the novel by Ian McEwan, directed by her uncle Andrew Birkin, the Jane Austen film adaptations “Jane Eyre” and “Love Etc.” (1997), a melancholy comedy that also featured Gainsbourg’s partner Yvan Attal. “My wife, the actress” (2001) was also made in collaboration with Attal – the film has unmistakably autobiographical traits.