One of the more pleasing by-products of the "Swinging Sixties," British stage actress Jane Birkin made a huge international impression in 1966 as one of the two nude models (she was the blonde) in Antonioni's existential feature film Blow-Up. Since that time, Birkin has often as not appeared in bisexual or androgynous film roles; in Roger Vadim's Don Juan 73 (1973), she was cast as Brigitte Bardot's lover. In the 1970s, she launched a second career as a popular recording artist, scoring a worldwide hit with "Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus." She created a sensation of Blow-Up dimensions in 1987 when, as star and screenwriter of director Agnès Varda's Kung Fu Master, she played a 40-year-old woman carrying on a torrid affair with a 15-year-old boy.

The following year, Varda expressed her admiration for Birkin with the feature-length documentary Jane B. par Agnes V. Rightly regarded by European cinephiles as one of filmdom's most versatile actresses, Birkin has had trouble shaking her earlier sex-kitten image with English-speaking audiences; only her work in 1985's Dust and 1990's Daddy Nostalgie has earned the unqualified praise of American critics. Once married to composer John Barry, Birkin then became the wife of French director Jacques Doillon. Jane Birkin is also the mother of actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, star of the 1996 remake of Jane Eyre; Charlotte's father is composer/director Serge Gainsbourg.

Credit: starpulse.com