Marianne Faithfull, sixties icon and actor, dies aged 78

Marianne Faithfull, the English rock singer who became one of the leading female artists of the British Invasion during the Swinging Sixties, has died aged 78.

- ROISIN O'CONNOR

The news was confirmed by her spokesperson, who said in a statement: "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."

Born in Hampstead, north London, to a Viennese mother with links to Austrian nobility and an MI6 agent who abandoned the family when she was six, Faithfull first began performing as a singer in 1964. She was introduced to Mick Jagger at London’s Indica Gallery, co-owned by her first husband, the artist John Dunbar, and began her association with the Rolling Stones when she recorded “As Tears Go By”. Written by Jagger, Keith Richards and Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham – who dismissed Faithfull as “an angel with big tits” but thought he could make her a star – the song made the Top 10 in the UK.

When her marriage to Dunbar collapsed, she moved in with Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg and began a relationship with Jagger, becoming a frequent target of the tabloids, not least during the infamous drugs bust at Richards’s Sussex mansion in 1967, when her singing career ground to a halt. “They hurt my feelings, all those busts and harassment,” she told The Independent in a 2008 interview. “I’m not saying I behaved that well, but I didn’t really do anything that terrible either.”

That same year, she launched an acting career with her debut theatre appearance in a stage adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Royal Court Theatre, opposite Glenda Jackson, and in Michael Winner’s comedy-drama I’ll Never Forget What’sisname opposite Orson Welles and Oliver Reed.