, the obsession with older men, and the eternal wish to please such men. No, no, Jane, you want to say, don't let Serge schmooze you into singing that song where you sound as though you're having an orgasm. Of course, she did do the song, Je t'aime… moi non plus, because Serge was Serge Gainsbourg, a charismatic composer, actor, writer and provocateur, terribly famous in France, terribly sexy – if you're looking for a rough-around-the-edges, lupine aura of amorality in your life – and she was madly in love with him. When it was released in 1969, the song, with its oddly anatomical lyrics and explicit sighs, went ballistic across the globe, was banned by the BBC, condemned by the Vatican, and brought them lots of money. Gainsbourg had written it for his former lover Brigitte Bardot, 'and I thought, if I don't do it, he'll ask her'. It was not by any means the first time that Birkin had done something daring for slightly cowardly reasons. Three years earlier, she won a coveted part in Blow-Up, an erotic thriller, which saw the pulchritudinous 20- year-old become the first actress to reveal her){kind=link}
In this archive interview, the late Jane Birkin reflects on love, wild living and that iconic handbag
This interview from 2020 has been republished following the death of Jane Birkin at the age of 76
The usual complaint with famous diaries is that there’s too much varnishing, not enough microscope. In Munkey Diaries: 1957-1982, the first volume of Jane Birkin’s journals, which were published in France two years ago and are about to be released in her native Britain, almost the reverse is true. One sees her so close up, it’s sometimes hard to take in the bigger picture.
She only realised years later, when she revisited the diaries to add some explanatory footnotes, how much she dwells on her misery and her neediness, and how little on her plays, films and music. ‘I mean, really, I was horrified by how faint-hearted I seem,’ says Birkin today. ‘Why didn’t I think my work was interesting?’
Instead, there’s the drink, the fights, the endless introspection (it’s a diary, after all), the obsession with older men, and the eternal wish to please such men. No, no, Jane, you want to say, don’t let Serge schmooze you into singing that song where you sound as though you’re having an orgasm.