The French singer, actor and model of the 1960s was 80 years old

Françoise Hardy, a French singer, actress and model whose classic beauty and often melancholic music combined to fascinate fans around the world in the 1960s and beyond, has died at age 80.

His son, Thomas Dutronc, also a musician, reported the death on his Instagram account, posting a baby photo of himself with his mother and writing: “Mommy is gone.” Or, mom left.

Hardy had battled lymphatic and laryngeal cancer for the past two decades, since he was first diagnosed with the disease in 2004.

A sign of his current legend, in 2023, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Hardy 162nd on a world ranking. ranking of the greatest singers of all time. She was the only French artist on the list. Will Hermes wrote that Hardy “simultaneously embodied French coolness and Gallic warmth, with a breathy, deadpan alto that floated like the smoke of the Gauloises.” Her words reinforced her tone: writing her own material, unusual in the early-mid '60s, especially for women, she also recorded works by masters like Serge Gainsbourg, and her version of Leonard Cohen's “Suzanne” is perhaps -to be the most evocative ever recorded, hers included. Hermes wrote that his dozens of albums “always make existentialism sound incredibly elegant.”

Hardy also became a model for designers like Yves Saint Laurent, and an actress, and American audiences may best remember John Frankenheimer's “Grand Prix” in 1966. Her screen appearances spanned 13 years, from ” Castle in Sweden” from 1963 to its 1976 swan song, Claude Lelouch’s “If It Had to Be Done Again.” Other acting roles include “A Bullet to the Heart” and an appearance in “What's Up, Pussycat?” »

“I was very naive and a well-bred young woman”, Hardy told the New York Times in 2018, describing a film career she didn't feel suited for. “I didn’t see how I could refuse offers from well-known directors. However, I much preferred music to cinema. Music and song allow you to go deep into yourself and what you feel, while cinema is about playing a role, embodying a character that could be very far from who you are.

Hardy had her first musical hit, “All the Boys and Girls”, in 1962, when she was just 18 years old. She had her biggest success in English in 1968 with “It Hurts to Say”. Goodbye”, written by Serge Gainsbourg, which became number 1 in the United Kingdom as well as in his native France.

She sang in French, English, Italian and German and attracted admirers among the world's biggest stars. Bob Dylan was among her admirers, addressing her with a poem on the back cover of his debut album “Another Side of Bob Dylan.” When he came to Paris to do his first concert, Hardy recalled, he refused to return to the stage unless she agreed to meet him.

In 2018, after enduring another round of health problems, Hardy made what proved to be his final comeback, publishing an autobiography, “The Despair of Apes and Other Trifles”, and releasing a new album, “Nobody d’Autre” (“Nobody Else”), his 28th.

The press tour she led to promote these projects marked a dramatic turnaround from her condition two years earlier, when she was placed in an induced coma and was not expected to recover. for her to be resuscitated.

Hardy maintained an interest in music until his later years. In 2017, her byline appeared on the website Talkhouse as she praised the band Cigarettes After Sex at length.

“It was love at first sight: it was exactly the music that I like best, and that I have been looking for all my life,” she wrote of the group. “If anything can define me and my songs, it’s romantic solitude. It probably has something to do with the lyrics, but what all the songs on Cigarettes After Sex suggest to me has more to do with love, sensuality, tenderness, beauty and melancholy than with the opposites of these things. I don't have that many really sensual songs, and all of Greg's songs are sensual… only a few mine are like that.

She spoke of her joy at learning that Cigarettes After Sex singer Greg Gonzales was a fan of hers and was excited to have been able to meet the band for dinner in Paris. “Here in Corsica, I want my husband and our friends to be as fond of this music as I am, so I play it over and over again, as loud as possible. Although I feel very young in my head, I'm unfortunately too old now to play Cigarettes After Sex's music on a romantic evening with a 'fiancé', as many of their other fans certainly do.” she writes.