Jane Birkin Style: Birkin to direct, write, star in autobiopic
According to London’s Sunday Times (May 14), Jane Birkin, “whose career highlights include simulating sex in the song ‘Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus’ and appearing naked in some questionable films, has never been noted for modesty.” (Image: The Jane Birkin style ca. 1970.)
The Times then reveals that “the British-born actress-singer has decided to make her own biopic in which she is writing, directing and starring as herself. For good measure Birkin, whose marriage to the louche French performer-director Serge Gainsbourg made her an icon of the late 1960s and 1970s, has signed a cast of friends and relatives for the movie, entitled Boxes.”
Now, I’m not sure if the following is true, but the Times goes on to state that back in the mid-’60s Jane Birkin “distinguished herself by becoming the first actress to show her pubic hair in a non-sex film.” The film in question is Michelangelo Antonioni’s Palme d’Or winner Blow-Up – hardly a “questionable” film. (Note: the Times may have gotten its pubic hairs confused. Apparently, it’s Gillian Hills’ pubic hair, not Jane Birkin’s, that can be spotted in Blow-Up.)
Jane Birkin movies
Whether fully naked, fully clothed, or merely showing her pubic hair, Jane Birkin has been featured in more than 60 movies. Besides Blow-Up, most notable among those are Henry Chapier’s Sex-Power (1970); Roger Vadim’s Don Juan (Or If Don Juan Were a Woman), with Brigitte Bardot; Michel Deville’s Le mouton enragé (1974), opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Romy Schneider; and Bernard Queysanne’s The Devil in the Heart (1976), with Jacques Spiesser and Emmanuelle Riva.
More Jane Birkin: Bertrand Tavernier’s Daddy Nostalgia (1990), with veteran Dirk Bogarde; Jacques Rivette’s La belle noiseuse (1991), with Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart; and two Hercule Poirot movies starring Peter Ustinov: John Guillermin’s Death on the Nile (1978), also featuring Bette Davis, Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury, Mia Farrow, Jon Finch, Simon MacCorkindale, Jack Warden, Lois Chiles, and David Niven; and Guy Hamilton’s Evil Under the Sun (1982), with Maggie Smith, Diana Rigg, James Mason, Nicholas Clay, Sylvia Miles, Colin Blakely, and Roddy McDowall.
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Jane Birkin is the mother of Charlotte Gainsbourg, among whose movie credits are Franco Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre (1996), with William Hurt; Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams (2003), with Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro; Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep (2006), with Gael García Bernal and Alain Chabat; and Emanuele Crialese’s Golden Door / Nuovomondo (2006), with Vincenzo Amato.
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It’s Gillian Hills’ pubic hair that you see.