DTel: Actress tells of her life with HIV in French best-seller
- From: kuacou241@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 17 Oct 2005 04:46:33 -0700
Actress tells of her life with HIV in French best-seller
By Colin Randall in Paris
Daily Telegraph
(Filed: 17/10/2005)
A French actress is causing a literary and social stir after revealing
that she has been HIV positive for virtually her entire career and had
a heart transplant two years ago.
Charlotte Valandrey's frank account of an adult life in which the
prospect of early death has always been present has entered the French
top-selling book charts and led to numerous television and magazine
interviews.
At 16, Valandrey was hot cinema property after a highly-acclaimed debut
in Rouge Baiser (Red Kiss); she seemed to have a glittering career
ahead of her.
At 17, she was told that she had been infected by the Aids virus.
She claims that she contracted the virus in 1985 from a French rock
musician to whom she refers in her book, L'Amour Dans Le Sang (Love in
the Blood), as "my Gothic prince"
She said: "My world caved in the day the letter arrived from the
laboratory announcing that I was HIV positive.
"I had been built up into a princess, I thought myself immortal. And
suddenly I was suffocated by guilt, telling myself 'you are being
punished for being happy, for winning that part in Rouge Baiser'.
"At the time, I was ranked with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sophie Marceau
as one of France's three most sought-after actresses of my generation,"
she said. Journalists would ask what it was like to "live a fairytale".
But doors began to close on her after she confided her secret on the
set of Jean-Claude Brisseau's 1989 film Noce Blanche (White Wedding).
She was later dropped, apparently because of insurance problems and the
part went to Vanessa Paradis.
"If I had made that film, I honestly feel my career would have turned
out completely differently," Valandrey, 36, told L'Express magazine.
In the event, she found herself having to take a string of low-key
television roles only one of which, a long-running French crime series,
was a big success.
She underwent transplant surgery in 2003 after being told, following
two coronary thrombosis attacks, that her heart retained only 10 per
cent of its capacity, though she believes that this was not linked to
her infection.
Valandrey is aware that she has broken new ground in French society by
speaking about living with the threat of Aids. Only a handful of public
figures have previously declared themselves HIV positive.
As an actress, she also recognises the potentially detrimental effect
of disclosing that she has had a heart transplant.
She says she decided it would be impossible to rebuild her life unless
she told the truth, and found it "liberating" to write the book.
At 17, she said, she knew nothing of Aids except that she assumed it
affected only homosexuals and drug addicts.
She expresses little bitterness towards the man who infected her,
beyond suggesting that it would have been "braver" of him to be honest
with her.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/17/wvalan17.xml
.
- Prev by Date: Re: Mysterious Monsieur X joins race to become next French president
- Next by Date: so what are good french porn stars
- Previous by thread: Re: Mysterious Monsieur X joins race to become next French president
- Next by thread: so what are good french porn stars
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
|
