rench singer, actress and model Françoise Hardy, a classic beauty who became famous worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s, passed away on June 11 in Paris at the age of 80.

Françoise Hardy’s son, Thomas Dutronc, also a musician, announced her passing on his Instagram account, posting a photo of the baby with his mother and writing: “Maman est partie” (Mom is gone). ).

Françoise Hardy has been battling lymphoma and laryngeal cancer for the past two decades, according to Variety .

In 2023, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Hardy 162nd on the ranking of the greatest singers of all time. She is the only French artist on the list. Writer Will Hermes wrote that Hardy “is the epitome of French freshness with a vibrant voice, wafting like the smoke of Gauloise”. Hermes commented that her dozens of released albums “make existentialism sound impossibly elegant”.

Françoise Hardy was also a model, designer and actress, best remembered by American audiences for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film Grand Prix. Her screen appearances spanned 13 years, from Castle in Switzerland from 1963 directed by Roger Vadim to If I Had to Do It All Over Again in 1976 directed by Claude Lelouch

Françoise Hardy performs the song Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles

“I was very naive and a well-educated woman,” Hardy told The New York Times in 2018, describing a film career she felt was unsuitable. “I don’t know how to refuse invitations from famous film directors. However, I prefer music more than cinema. Music allows you to go deep into yourself and your feelings, while cinema “Photography is playing a role, playing a character who may be miles away from you.”

Françoise Hardy had her first hit: Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles in 1962, when she was just 18 years old. She had her big break with an English song in 1968: It Hurts to Say . The song Goodbye Emmanuelle written by Serge Gainsbourg helped her win number 1 in the UK as well as in her homeland. She is famous for the songs: Comment Te Dire Adieu , Le Temps de l’Amour …

The female singer was born in 1944, sings in French, English, Italian and German, attracting admiration from the ranks of the world’s biggest stars. Bob Dylan was one of Françoise Hardy’s admirers, sending her a poem written on the back cover of his first album: Another Side of Bob Dylan . Hardy once said that when he went to Paris to perform his first concert, Bob Dylan refused to return to the stage unless she agreed to meet him.

In 2018, after enduring a series of further health problems, Françoise Hardy returned to music one last time, releasing her 28th album Personne d’Autre (Nobody Else) and publishing her autobiography The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles.