French actor Alain Delon, English singer and actress Marianne Faithfull, and English singer Mick Jagger at a meeting with film director Jack Cardiff to discuss his film 'The Girl on a Motorcycle', 1967.(Photo by Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Marianne Faithfull in Film: She Worked with Godard, Played Ophelia, and Starred in the First X-Rated Movie

The iconic English singer/songwriter died January 30 at age 78, leaving behind a film career cut short by turmoil in her life.

by · IndieWire

Marianne Faithfull, the iconic English singer and songwriter who first appeared in the mid-1960s, then returned after years of personal problems, including heroin addiction and homelessness, with her masterful 1979 album “Broken English,” died surrounded by her family at her London home on January 30. Though known mainly for her music, in the late 1960s she embarked on a career as a film actress (best known for “The Girl on a Motorcycle”) that was cut short by turmoil in her life. She was 78.

Best known initially for “As Tears Go By” in 1964 when she was only 17 (the song was co-written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards) her father was a career military man and intelligence officer and Italian literature professor, her mother from Austrian-Hungarian nobility. She was initially discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones’ manager.

She quickly fell in with the Stones (eventually becoming Jagger’s lover and sometime muse), and during this time became more famous for her association with members of London’s increasingly fashionable music scene than subsequent recordings.

Her acting career in film, television, and stage spanned nearly six decades. Most of her film work is now little known but includes acting in prominent roles for major directors.

‘The Girl on a Motorcycle’Courtesy Everett Collection

She first appeared as herself in Jean-Luc Godard‘s 1966 largely improvised “Made in USA.” Her stage debut was at London’s Royal Court Theatre in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” with Glenda Jackson.

“I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname,” made for Universal in England in 1968 with up-and-coming director Michael Winner and starring Orson Welles and Oliver Reed, reinforced her image as a creative norm-shatterer. Denied an MPAA certificate (just before the ratings began), the comedy depicted references to previously restricted sexual activity, with her voicing an early (if obscured) “fuck” in the dialogue.

“The Girl on a Motorcycle,” also 1968, provided her with her first lead part and also most famous. Directed by Jack Cardiff (legendary British cinematographer, but also director of “Sons and Lovers”), she played a restless newlywed who flees on her prized motorbike to reunite with a recent lover (Alain Delon). Filled with drug- and alcohol-fueled scenes, it is a time capsule of a brief period when studio movies tried to capture the youth scene. Its more lasting memory is for mainstreaming leather into general audience fare (this was a Warner Bros. film).

It was scheduled to premiere at Cannes in 1968, but that festival was canceled. With the start of the MPAA ratings that November, it got the first X-rating (the first year multiple films that soon would be rated R for similar content were assigned that, including “Midnight Cowboy.”) The film was a success in France and Britain, but gained little traction in the U.S.

Marianne Faithfull and Nicol Williamson in ‘Hamlet’Courtesy Everett Collection

The same year she played Florence Nightingale on stage in “Early Morning,” she was also cast as Ophelia in a production of “Hamlet” by Tony Richardson (“Tom Jones”). Richardson then included her in his film version, also in 1969, co-starring Nicol Williamson and Anthony Hopkins.

As her life became increasingly difficult, acting roles became fewer. She appeared in Kenneth Anger’s 29-minute short “Lucifer Rising” (though made years earlier, not released until 1980), and a handful of little seen films like “Assault on Agathon,” a Greek-set spy thriller in 1975. Up through that year she had several additional stage appearances in Britain.

When she returned to film in the 1990s, it was mostly in independent projects, and often as a narrator or otherwise using her raspy voice (far different from her original singing). These films include Sara Driver’s “When Pigs Fly” (1992), “Shopping” (1993, the first film from Paul W.S. Anderson, later a major genre director, and Jude Law’s first lead role), Patrice Chéreau’s “Intimacy” (Berlin 2001 Golden Bear winner), Gus Van Sant’s segment in “Paris, je t’aime” (2006), and Empress Maria Therese in Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” (2006).

‘Irina Palm’Strand Releasing/courtesy Everett Collection

“Irina Palm” (2007), a lead role, saw her get a Best Actress nomination from the European Film Academy for playing a 60-year-old woman reduced to being a sex worker to pay for her son’s medical bills. It had significant success in Europe, but only a minor U.S. release.

In “Dune” (2021) she voiced a Bene Gesserit disciple heard in Paul Atreides’ visions.

Despite having a personal history that somehow paralleled Amy Winehouse’s, among Faithfull’s great achievements is that she not only survived but put together dual careers in both music and, to a lesser extent, film. She did so long after traumas that would have ended most. In retrospect, it feels like a major loss that she was far less a presence on film than she could have been.