Kate Barry, photographer daughter of Jane Birkin and Bond film composer John Barry, dies in fall from Paris apartment

 
Death: Kate Barry, left, and her stepsister actress Charlotte Gainsbourg
Foc Kan/WireImage
Kiran Randhawa|Peter Allen12 December 2013

The daughter of actress and singer Jane Birkin and the late James Bond composer John Barry has been found dead on the pavement outside her fourth floor flat in Paris.

London-born Kate Barry, a fashion photographer, is believed to have been alone when she plunged 80ft to her death.

Police found anti-depressants in her home shortly after the 46-year-old’s body was found at around 6.30pm yesterday.

Ms Birkin, 66, best known for controversial 1969 song “Je t’aime”, lives a few miles away from the apartment in the upmarket 16th arrondissement of the French capital.

She was too upset to comment, a spokesman for the family said.

The flat, which was found locked, was today sealed off and was being examined by police.

Family portrait: Actress Jane Birkin with young daughters Kate Barry and Charlotte Gainsbourg pictured in 1976

A source close to the investigation said Ms Barry is believed to have jumped out of the window.

He said: “The initial theory is suicide.”

Ms Barry, whose photographs were featured in Vogue and the Sunday Times magazine and were recently exhibited in Paris, grew up in the public eye.

Her mother, who starred in Death on the Nile, became a sex symbol through her 13-year love affair with the French singer Serge Gainsbourg.

English actress and singer Jane Birkin with her daughter Kate (whose father is composer John Barry), at the Children's Dancing Matinee at the Theatre Royal Adelphi, The Strand, 3rd July 1970. The matinee is in aid of the League of Pity. (Photo by Frank Barratt/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Frank Barratt/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Kate Barry - 1986
Getty Images

The pair never married but Gainsbourg raised Ms Barry like a daughter.

Their daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg has released four albums and is a French film star.

Ms Barry’s father John Barry split with Ms Birkin in 1967, the year she was born in London.

The composer wrote all the most famous music of James Bond, including the opening theme and the hit songs for Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever, both sung by Shirley Bassey. He died in 2011.

Ms Barry’s son Roman de Kermadec, 26, was believed to be with his grandmother today as the family tried to come to terms with the tragedy.

France’s culture minister Aurelie Filippetti paid tribute to Ms Barry, who had once battled drug and alcohol addiction.

Father: Bond film composer John Barry at an awards ceremony in 2005
John Barry poses in the Awards Room with the Bafta Fellowship Award at The Orange British Academy Film Awards 2005 at the Odeon Leicester Square on February 12, 2005 in London. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

He offered “heartfelt and loving thoughts” to “a family we all love, the French love”.

Ms Filippetti said Ms Barry had become “an outstanding photographer who understood “the very meaning of pictures, staging, light and composition”.

When she was 17, Ms Barry underwent treatment for drug and alcohol addiction in central London. Since then she has maintained a close relationship with groups including Alcoholics Anonymous and set up a centre for addicts in France in 1993.

She was especially close to her mother, who lives nearby on Paris’ Left Bank.

Ms Birkin, who also has a daughter Lou Doillon with the director Jacques Doillon, has frequently spoken about her closeness to her daughters. Earlier this year, she said: “I’ve never had a week without having all three of my daughters on the telephone.

“My eldest daughter, Kate, looks most like me. She’s a photographer. She had a Polaroid camera in her hand from a young age and photographed her sisters all the time.”

Ms Barry was brought up until the age of 13 by Ms Birkin and Gainsbourg, who died in 1991.

The couple sang Je t’aime... moi non plus, a song so seductive and sexually explicit that it was banned on radio.

Ms Barry began her career as a professional photographer in 1996 and her first major exhibition was at the Bunkamura Gallery in Tokyo in 2000.

She went on to produce pictures for a variety of publications including British Vogue and the Sunday Times magazine.

Last year she told French newspaper Liberation she chose her profession so she would not have to be seen and said the idea of a photo of her appearing in the media made her “want to cry”.

She put her reluctance down to being “photographed a lot as a child”.

For confidential support contact Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90.

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