Charlotte’s Web
Charlotte Gainsbourg might already be an indie film star, but her new music career bodes well too
Image -
Paul Jasmine
CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG IS NO STRANGER TO CONTROVERSY. Aged 12 she caused uproar duetting on the provocative single Lemon Incest with her illustrious French father, the late pop singer and provocateur Serge. Last year her turn in the graphic Lars von Trier film Antichrist won her the Best Actress Award at Cannes. But behind this seemingly confident exterior, the 38-year-old is coy about her first UK live shows.
“It’s very intimidating, you have the best musicians in England,” she says in an impeccable accent which belies the breathy French-style vocals that characterise her three albums. Charlotte can thank her mother, the British actress/singer Jane Birkin for her clipped tones. Birkin, who arrived in France in 1968, raised her daughters in Paris and inspired a Hermès bag.
Although she released her first album, Charlotte Forever in 1986, Gainsbourg only started touring this year. Beck – who recorded her new album IRM – and Birkin, who has made over 20 albums and accompanied her daughter at several concerts – persuaded her to go solo.
Despite her musical heritage, insecurity plagues Gainsbourg. “My voice is the same as the one on the album. I was terrified that people would be disappointed by that.” This July, she plays the intimate British festival Latitude. “I’m looking forward to it. There’s an energy that you can’t find when you’re doing your own shows. I’m not a fan of camping though.”
IRM was inspired by a near-death experience. Three years ago, Gainsbourg had a water-skiing accident and started suffering headaches. It transpired that she had a brain haemorrhage.
“I thought I was very brave and that I didn’t care about dying. But when it nearly happened I was petrified and it took me a long time to get over that.” As a result she had many MRI scans – known as IRM in France. “Even though they were scary at first, the scans were the only way for me to be reassured that nothing was going wrong in my head. I liked the chaos and the violence of the sounds and knew I wanted to use them on a record.”
Beck also liked the idea of sampling the MRI sound and began to write tracks related to the brain and memories. “There was a real alchemy between us that I can’t explain,” she says. “We’re not that close but he was able to write things which were very personal.”
The result is a confident and eclectic album, with Gainsbourg sounding less ethereal than she did on 5:55. She attributes this to recording the album IRM in Los Angeles, away from her father’s legacy.
Serge remains a massive influence on her life and she uses his colourful, graffiti-covered Parisian house as a private place to grieve. His behaviour was unconventional but she says he only embarrassed her once, when he burnt a 500-franc note on TV which inspired her fellow high-school pupils to burn her work. “I loved the way he was. He was different from how he was on television when he was at home.” Raised with two half-sisters, Gainsbourg claims their upbringing wasn’t remotely bohemian. “It was structured; we never missed school. Of course, my parents went to wild nightclubs but our lives were normal.”
But normality is a mutable concept. After appearing semi-naked on a bed with Serge in the video for Lemon Incest, her mother pointed Gainsbourg in the direction of a casting agent and she landed her first film role playing Catherine Deneuve’s daughter in Paroles et Musique aged 13. And in 1993, she revisited the theme of incest in The Cement Garden, an adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel directed by her uncle Andrew Birkin. Now married to actor/director Yvan Attal, she says she’s not pushing her own children – Ben, 12, and Alice, seven – into following the family career path. After all, she has difficulty coming to terms with it herself. “I’ve never felt comfortable saying ‘I’m an actress’ because it was accidental. Singing is the same, but it doesn’t stop me from loving it.”
So what motivates Gainsbourg? It’s certainly not money or she’d have decamped to Hollywood and chosen big-name producers to record her album. “Being able to collaborate with talented people is more important for me than the script and the songs themselves,” she says. Her next project is Von Trier’s Melancholia. “He’s a real artist, which is rare nowadays, but I’m nervous talking about it in case it collapses.” With her UK dates looming, it looks like Charlotte Gainsbourg has a tense summer ahead.
Anna Chapman
Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London on 22 June; Latitude Festival, Suffolk on 18 July
