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Thursday, May 21, 2009
Arts / News Actress Lucy Gordon found dead
Posted By Anita Overcash on Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:50 PM
British actress Lucy Gordon has been found dead in her Paris flat. It is believed she committed suicide. Gordon, appeared in the film Spider-Man 3, among others. Read more in the Times Online article below.
Lucy Gordon, a British actress who appeared in Spider-Man 3 and was an emerging film star in France, has been found dead in her Paris flat after apparently committing suicide by hanging.Gordon, a former model from Oxford who began an acting career in 2001, was two days short of her 29th birthday. Police said that there was no suspicion of foul play. "It appears that the young woman took her own life," said a spokesman.
However, an investigation has been opened and police questioned a male friend who was reported to have raised the alarm after finding her body early yesterday morning. A shopkeeper in the rue des Petites Ecuries, in newly fashionable north-central Paris, said that the friend, who has not been named, had burst into his premises calling for help, according to Gala celebrity magazine.
Gordon's death saddened colleagues at the Cannes festival, which had just been shown a preview of a forthcoming biopic of Serge Gainsbourg in which she plays Jane Birkin, the long-time companion of the late, iconoclastic singer-composer.
"The film owes a lot to the generous spirit, to the kindess and immense talent of Lucy Gordon," said a statement from the producers and directors of Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life.
The film, directed by Joann Sfar, is completed and to be given a wide international release later this year. It was expected to bring new fame to Gordon, who made her debut in 2001 in the film Perfume. In Heroic Life, Laticia Casta, the former supermodel, plays the role of Brigitte Bardot, the film star and former Gainsbourg mistress.
At his Oxford home, Richard Gordon, the actress's father, said that the family was shattered. "She has been the light of our lives," he said. "We have always been immensely proud of her and her achievements. We love her so much."
"She was a lovely, generous, unselfish person who gave her all for others and thought of others before herself. She has been doing what she loved and what she wanted to do for the last many years.
"She has been a natural actress all her life, since she was about two. She's always loved being on stage and in front of the camera and she has kept all her naturalness and charm all the way through.
Gordon had seemed set to follow in the footsteps of other British performers whose careers have bloomed in France — notably Charlotte Rampling, Jane Birkin, Kristen Scott-Thomas and the singer Petula Clark. She had been due to appear last night as the main guest on le Grand Journal, a popular early evening news and chat show on the Canal+ network.
In France, Gordon broke into the big time in 2005 with Poupée Russes (Russian Dolls), a 2005 romantic comedy directed by Cedric Klapisch and starring Audrey Tautou. In the film, which was a continent-wide hit, she played a neurotic English supermodel who falls for a young biographer.
Gordon's first film role was in the 2002 US historical drama The Four Feathers. The cast included Heath Ledger, the Australian actor who died of a drugs overdose in his New York flat last year.
In 2007, Gordon played the role of Jennifer Dugan, a British reporter, in the third instalment of the Spider-Man films.
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