Marianne Faithfull, singer and Rolling Stones muse, dead at 78
2025-01-31
Category: entertainment

Singer and actress Marianne Faithfull, best known for her song "As Tears Go By," has died. She was 78. "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," a spokesperson for Faithfull confirmed to Fox News Digital.&nbsp; The British pop star and muse inspired and helped write a few of the Rolling Stones' greatest songs. Her breakthrough hit, 1964's "As Tears Go By," was one of the first songs written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. HOLLYWOOD STARS WHO DIED IN 2025: PHOTOS  She was famously known for her relationship with Jagger, as the couple started dating in 1966. Faithfull inspired songs from the band like "Wild Horses" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want." After tragically becoming a heroin addict in the late '60s, she continued to suffer multiple health issues over the years, including bulimia, breast cancer and emphysema. MICK JAGGER DISCUSSES MORTALITY AND HOW RELATIONSHIPS CHANGED However, in 1979, Faithfull revived her music career with the classic album, "Broken English."  Her interests extended to theater, film and television. Faithfull began acting in the 1960s, including an appearance in Jean-Luc Godard's "Made In U.S.A." and stage roles in "Hamlet" and Chekhov's "Three Sisters."&nbsp; She would later appear in such films as "Marie Antoinette" and "The Girl from Nagasaki," and the TV series "Absolutely Fabulous," in which she was cast as — and did not flinch from playing — God.  Faithful was married three times, and in recent years dated her manager, Francois Ravard. Jagger was her most famous lover, but other men in her life included Richards, David Bowie and the early rock star Gene Pitney. Among the rejected – Bob Dylan, who had been so taken that he was writing a song about her, until Faithfull, pregnant with her son at the time, turned him down. LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS  Her father was a British intelligence officer during World War II who helped save her mother from the Nazis in Vienna. Through the London art scene, Faithfull met her estranged husband, John Dunbar, who introduced her to Paul McCartney and other celebrities. Dunbar also co-founded the Indica Gallery, where John Lennon would say he met Yoko Ono. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER  "The threads of a dozen little scenes were invisibly twining together," she wrote in her 1994 memoir. "All these people — gallery owners, photographers, pop stars, aristocrats and assorted talented layabouts more or less invented the scene in London, so I guess I was present at the creation." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Meanwhile, as Faithfull was famously known for her track "As Tears Go By," she only needed two takes to complete the popular song.&nbsp; "It's an absolutely astonishing thing for a boy of 20 to have written," Faithfull penned in her memoir of Jagger. "A song about a woman looking back nostalgically on her life. The uncanny thing is that Mick should have written those words so long before everything happened. It's almost as if our whole relationship was prefigured in that song." The Associated Press contributed to this report.