Congratulations to Charlotte Gainsbourg on winning the Best Actress prize at Cannes!
Jane was at the Hay Literary Festival this weekend.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/24/jane-birkin-guardian-hay-festival
Singer and actor Jane Birkin – gamine, frisky and voluble – sashayed into the
Guardian Hay festival at the weekend, where she tossed out anecdotes about her career, love life and experiences recording the immortal Serge Gainsbourg classic, Je t'aime … moi non plus.In the nicest possible way, her talk was a shower of dropped names, starting with "My ma knew Binky Beaumont," and ending with, "And I said to Brigitte Bardot: 'Do you mind awfully entwining your legs with mine?'"
At her first ever stage audition she was unsuccessful in that she went to the wrong theatre and thought she was trying out for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but was successful in that she got the part of "a deaf and dumb girl" in a play with Sir Ralph Richardson.
Graham Greene said she was "the perfect symbol of innocence". She married composer John Barry at 17. But it was not, in the end, a success.
"I had never known anyone before I was married to him, and I didn't know what to do – I was a complete washout in that department. Other girls could knock it off better than I could."
Then she met Gainsbourg. Their first date started with his asking a nightclub band to play Sibelius's Valse Triste for her – he stuffed their violins with 100 franc notes.
It ended in the meat market in Paris, with his buying champagne for the butchers. He then passed out in the Hilton Hotel.
"It was a divine beginning and it went on becoming more romantic," said Birkin. "He took more attention than you can imagine to make sure you were sexually OK, with tiny wee cushions everywhere so one was comfortable. I never knew anyone who gave one such tiny, exquisite attentions.
"It was like having a wonderful parrot who bites everyone else but you. Everyone said: 'Oh Serge, he's so dangerous.' I said : 'Oh yes, he is,' but really, he was a pushover – very sentimental, very romantic."
The Guardian Hay festival this year has been basking in heat – a novel experience for those who recall last year's floods and storms.
As a result, the festival is breaking records, according to director Peter Florence, with more visitors in its opening weekend than the whole of the 2008 festival, and ticket sales up 13% against expectations.
Highlights so far have included astronomer royal Martin Rees, historians Eric Hobsbawm and Niall Ferguson discussing the aftermath of the Versailles Treaty, and Lincoln's distinguished biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, on the parallels between US president Barack Obama and his predecessor George W Bush.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKTRE54M1PA20090523
JANE BIRKIN PLEDGES SUPPORT FOR SUU KYI
HAY-ON-WYE, Wales (Reuters) - Actress and singer Jane Birkin pledged on Saturday her support for Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, facing trial for allowing an uninvited guest into her home.
Birkin , who met Suu Kyi in Myanmar in 1999, said she had written a song about the Nobel laureate, who faces up to five years in jail if found guilty of breaking the terms of her house arrest.
"I haven't stopped singing it and won't until things change in Burma (Myanmar,)" she told an audience at the Hay Festival.
Suu Kyi on Friday pleaded not guilty after a prison court formally charged her. Birkin, has supported a campaign of disinvestment in Myanmar and has taken her plea to French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The 62-year old actress, who achieved fame in 1969 for her duet "Je t'aime, moi non plus" with her late partner Serge Gainsbourg, performed songs from a new album as part of the Hay Festival programme.
There's also a brief mention of Jane
here but it basically repeats what was said in the first Guardian report, contrasting her favourably to the likes of Abi Titmuss...