If your mother has been an actress and your grandmother’s been an actress, there’s certainly an encouragement. My father wanted me to be a painter, so my mother helped me on the secret side. She got a lot of stick for that. But in the end my father adored me in films.Had it all worked out with John Barry [her first husband, whom she married at 18], I would never have been curious to know what was going on anywhere else. I would have just gone on being his wife, I would have been delighted. But because he went off with someone else, and I was left with Kate [their daughter, who died in 2013], I had to find a job quite fast.I learned French off a tape recorder and from what Serge [Gainsbourg] would [ . . . ]

Full Story t Source: Jane Birkin: ‘I learned French off a tape recorder’ | Life and style | The Guardian