She had been consecrated by the film Rouge Baiser in 1985 and, above all, she had made public her HIV status and her heart transplant problems: actress Charlotte Valandrey died on Wednesday July 13, announced to Agence France-Presse (AFP), his agent and his family. She was 53 years old.
She had revealed her HIV status in 2005 in her autobiography, L’Amour dans le sang, a big bookstore success (180,000 sales), then adapted into a TV movie. Her triple therapy had exhausted her heart and she had resorted to a transplant in 2003, which made her the first HIV-positive heart transplant patient in France.
Tributes from aid associations for AIDS patients
Recently, she had announced on social networks that her second heart was coming to an end and that she needed a new transplant. “Waiting for my third,” she wrote on Instagram on June 8. With weary humor: “I need all your positive vibes. Because the Warrior is less Warrior…”
“On June 14, Charlotte had to have emergency surgery to replace her ‘used heart’, as she called it, but that new transplant didn’t take, that third heart didn’t live,” explained his daughter, his sister and his father in a statement sent to AFP.
Associations helping AIDS patients tweeted tribute messages, like Aides: “We learn with emotion of the death of Charlotte Valandrey, who has many times contributed alongside us to fight against HIV and discrimination suffered by the people who live with it. »
Charlotte Valandrey has “been a great and tireless witness to life with HIV and has thus made it possible to advance the fight against stigmatization”, wrote Sidaction on its networks.
In 1985, the film “Rouge Baiser” made her a star
Charlotte Valandrey was not yet 17 at the release of Rouge Baiser, by Véra Belmont, the film that revealed her. She embodies, in France during the Cold War, Nadia, a young rebel who militates in the Young Communists and sees her ideal waver after a romantic encounter with Stéphane (Lambert Wilson).
He was then predicted a destiny à la Sophie Marceau. It was a few days before she turned 18 that she learned that she had contracted HIV. With a “gothic prince”, member of a famous rock band, she will only say. She only informs her parents and her lovers, but she is not selected for Noce blanche (1989), by Jean-Claude Brisseau, after having shared the secret of her illness with the director. “The glitter flies away like ashes… Something broke, cinema left me,” she says.
His filmography is then far from the glory that he was promised. Her career is mainly on television: from 1991 to 2000, she plays in the series Les Cordier, judge and cop (up to 11.4 million viewers); from 2017 to 2019, she played judge Laurence Moiret in Tomorrow belongs to us. The TF1 group, broadcaster of these series, expressed its “deep sadness”.
A daily fight against the disease
The actress will have fought all her life on a daily basis against the disease. “Coming out of my transplant, I weighed 35 kg. I divorced, moved, I no longer had a job or a social life. It was a lot,” she confessed. She clings on, especially for her daughter Tara, who was born HIV-negative in 2000 from her “will to survive”.
Like during this new blow in 2008 when, during a heart attack, his heart stopped beating for 22 seconds. It goes up the slope, in particular thanks to psychoanalysis. She finds her way back to the boards, starts singing and continues writing, with a seventh book published in 2022, Reconciling with yourself. She is also actively involved in favor of organ donation and becomes the godmother of the Greffe de vie foundation.
Resolutely optimistic, she retained a certain bitterness from the years when she had felt let down. “Today, when Stromae sings about his suicidal thoughts or Florent Pagny talks about his fight against cancer, we support them and that’s good. Me, at the time, I was left all alone in my corner. »
Charlotte Valandrey – whose real name is Anne-Charlotte Pascal – must be “buried in privacy in Pléneuf-Val-André”, a Breton town where she spent holidays during her childhood and which inspired her artist name, announced her relatives. A religious ceremony will take place in September in Paris.
