Tributes paid as icon Marianne Faithfull dies, age 78: “She will be dearly missed”

The singer and actress was closely associated with the 'Swinging London' scene in the 1960s and was a prominent figure in the British Invasion

The iconic singer and actress Marianne Faithfull has died at the age of 78.

The news was confirmed on Thursday evening (January 30) by her spokesperson, who said: “It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull. Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family. She will be dearly missed.”

Faithfull was a key figure in the ‘Swinging London’ arts and music scene in the 1960s, becoming one of the leading female artists during the British Invasion era. She is remembered for hits including ‘As Tears Go By’ and for her roles on stage and screen.

Faithfull was born in 1946 in London and grew up in Reading, before returning to the capital as a teenager. She quickly met Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of The Rolling Stones, and in 1964 she had her first hit with the Mick Jagger–Keith Richards composition ‘As Tears Go By’, which reached the UK Top Ten when she was still 17 years old.

She had three further major hits over the following 12 months – ‘Come And Stay With Me’, ‘This Little Bird’ and ‘Summer Nights’ – and quickly established herself as a successful singles artist in the US too.

In the mid-’60s, she also became a regular presence on the West End stage, starring in Chekhov’s Three Sisters alongside Glenda Jackson and Shakespeare’s Hamlet opposite Anjelica Huston.

Her early film roles included playing herself in the 1966 Jean-Luc Godard film Made In The USA, and she starred in films alongside the likes of Orson Welles and Oliver Reed in 1967’s I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname and Alain Delon in The Girl On A Motorcycle.

It was her association with The Rolling Stones, however, that drove her public profile to a significant extent. Having married the artist John Dunbar in 1965, with whom she had a son Nicholas, she left her husband for Jagger the following year, with whom she had a four-year relationship.

She is often considered to have been a “muse” for the band, and is thought to have inspired songs such as ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ and ‘Wild Horses’. She also co-wrote their song ‘Sister Morphine’, although she had to win the rights to be credited as a writer in a long legal battle years later.

Faithfull’s initially high-registered voice altered over the years, partly attributed to drug abuse and partly to laryngitis. After a fallow period, she returned to critical acclaim with her 1979 album ‘Broken English’, which earned her a Grammy nomination and spawned a career renaissance.

In her later life, she continued to work alongside artists such as Nick Cave and PJ Harvey, and in 2022, she appeared in Cave’s documentary film This Much I Know To Be True, in which she read the May Sarton poem ‘Prayer Before Work’ as an introduction to Cave and Warren Ellis performing the track ‘Galleon Ship’.

Her work inspires