Actor Elijah Wood has led tributes to Francoise Hardy after the French singer died on Tuesday night aged 80 after a long battle with cancer.
Hardy, known the world over for her crystalline voice and melancholy lyrics, suffered with different types of the disease, including lymphoma and laryngeal, over two decades.
It made her a passionate advocate for euthanasia, as she declared her home nation ‘inhuman’ for not allowing the procedure.
In the wake of her passing, tributes have flooded in, with the most notable coming from American actor Wood, 43, who shared a touching image of the singer on X, formerly Twitter.
Posting on the social media platform, the actor wrote: ‘Au revoir, Francoise Hardy’ – accompanied with a black-and-white photograph of the vocalist.
Actor Elijah Wood has led tributes to Francoise Hardy after the French singer died on Tuesday night aged 80 after a long battle with cancer
Hardy, known the world over for her crystalline voice and melancholy lyrics, suffered with different types of the disease, including lymphoma and laryngeal, over two decades
Replying to Elijah, other fans also paid tributes of their own to Francoise, posting: ‘Farewell beautiful Francoise. My condolences to the family.’
Another added: ‘Thank you for everything Francoise. You will stay in my heart and on my playlist’.
A third wrote: ‘This morning I mourned the death of Francoise Hardy, more than the death of my own mother!’
It follows another tribute from Francoise’s son Thomas Dutronc, whose father is fellow singer Jacques Dutronc, after the former announced her death in a simple post to Instagram which read: ‘Mum is gone.’
Further tributes to the iconic singer included those from prominent French politicians.
France’s culture minister, Rachida Dati, said in a post to X: ‘How to say goodbye to her? Eternal Françoise Hardy, legend of French song, who entered, through her sensitivity and her melodies, into the heart of an entire country.
‘I send my warmest thoughts to Thomas Dutronc, her son, her family and her loved ones.’
Far-right politician Marine Le Pen said on X: ‘Françoise Hardy, icon of French song, left this evening. Several generations have been touched by her melancholy voice and the poetry of her texts. My condolences to her family.’
Hardy rose to prominence at just 18 with her first hit ‘Tous les Garcons et les Filles’ (‘All the Boys and Girls’) in 1962, and helped found the ye-ye style of music, a pop-inspired cultural movement that embraced British and American rock in the 1960s.
In the wake of her passing, tributes have flooded in, with the most notable coming from American actor Wood, 43, who shared a touching image of the singer on X, formerly Twitter
Tributes also came in from fans of the singer following news of her death
Her status as a cultural juggernaut saw her schmooze with the biggest names in showbusiness at the time, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan.
She also worked with songwriters including Serge Gainsbourg, Patrick Modiano, Michel Berger and Catherine Lara.
Her later years were marred by illness, with Hardy being put into an induced coma at one point, before her life was saved by a novel form of radiation.
She was a leading advocate for assisted suicide near the end of her life, telling the magazine that it was ‘inhumane’ for France not to legalise the controversial procedure.
‘It is not for the doctors to accede to each request, but to shorten the unnecessary suffering of an incurable disease from the moment it becomes unbearable.’
She joked at the time that while she would’ve loved to have chosen to end her own life, ‘given my small notoriety, no one will want to run the risk of being removed from the medical order even more.’
In one of her last interviews before her death, she said the one thing she would miss was her son.
She told Le Parisien: ‘I think above all of the immense sorrow of leaving my son, of causing him pain.
‘But I would much rather die than suffer prolonged unbearable conditions. And I always have in the back of my mind the idea that there is something next.’
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