The Missing actress Émilie Dequenne dies aged 43 from rare cancer
She appeared in the BBC drama.
Belgian actress Émilie Dequenne has died aged 43 less than two years after revealing she had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
The late star, who won the Cannes Film Festival Award for best actress for her 1999 debut in Rosetta aged 17, confirmed in October 2023 that she had been diagnosed with adrenocortical carcinoma, which is a cancer of the adrenal gland.
Her family and agent announced the sad news of her death to AFP.
In April 2024, Dequenne had revealed she was in remission and had plans to return to acting.
‘I was close to forgetting because I was leaving the hospital today after 13 days… What a tough battle,’ she wrote on social media at the time.
However, months later she suffered a relapse of her illness and gave a heartbreaking update about her condition.
She made her debut in award winning film Rosetta in 1999 (Picture: Christine Plenus/October/Studio Canal +/Films Du Fleuve/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock) She went onto appear in films like Close in 2022 (Picture: A24)She told French television programme TF1 in December: ‘I know I will not live as long as planned.’
Dequenne rose to fame with her role in the Dardenne brothers film Rosetta, which launched her career.
She went onto appear in the likes of Brotherhood of the Wolf, Yes, But…, The Very Merry Widows, The Light, and Close, as well as playing Laurence Relaud in eight episodes of the first series of 2014 BBC drama The Missing.
The actress also landed roles in various French language movies, including 2009’s The Girl On The Train and 2012’s Our Children.
In 2024, she returned to Cannes to celebrate 25 years since Rosetta, as well as her final movie Survive.
She played Laurence in The Missing (Picture: BBC/New Pictures Ltd)The action thriller was released that year, and Dequenne revealed she ‘didn’t know she was sick’ during filming in late 2022.
‘So I’m fighting cancer, which is something really strange when you look at Survive and me fighting against all the crabs,’ she told The Action Elite.
‘But I didn’t know I was sick by the time I was shooting the movie, and I got sick almost like six or eight months later. I’m still fighting.’
Dequenne, who is survived by husband Michel Ferracci and her daughter, noted that her own experiences as a mother convinced her to take on the role.
‘I can’t explain, but when you became a mother, it’s like your strength and your power and your braveness completely changed. And you see life through another vision,’ she said.
Dequenne didn’t know she was ill during filming for Survive (Picture: Boyer David/ABACA/REX/Shutterstock)‘And that’s what completely attracted me when I read the script, is that for me, it was really realistic, actually despite the fact that, of course, it’s dystopic and I love that.’
French Minister for Culture, Rachida Dati, has led tributes to the late star.
‘French-language cinema is losing, too soon, a talented actress who still had so much to offer,’ Dati wrote on X.
Actress Leïla Bekhti hailed Dequenne as a ‘great lady, great soul, great actress, a queen’.
Cannes Film Festival’s former president Gilles Jacob told AFP: ‘She breathed a crazy vitality into a film [Rosetta] that was already going at 100 miles an hour.’
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