LONDON - British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull has been diagnosed
with breast cancer but expects to make a full recovery, her publicist said on
Thursday.
Doctors in France who diagnosed the disease said the cancer was in its
earliest stages.
The 59-year-old Faithfull, a former girlfriend of Rolling Stones singer Mick
Jagger, has postponed a world tour she was due to start next month.
The singer with the distinctive gravelly voice said in a statement: "I have
absolute faith and confidence in my fantastic medical team and of course I will
be well again, if not better than ever.
"Next year's tour, I want to assure fans, will be one big celebration," she
added.
Her spokesman Rob Partridge said: "The disease has been quickly discovered by
doctors in France — where Marianne stays when not at home in Ireland — and the
prognosis for a return to full health is excellent.
"Indeed, Marianne Faithfull is looking forward to playing the re-scheduled
tour in 2007."
Faithfull, the daughter of an Austro-Hungarian baroness, began her music
career in 1964 after being discovered at a Rolling Stones launch party when just
17 years old.
Jagger and fellow Rolling Stone Keith Richards penned her first hit — "As
Tears Go By".
She married artist John Dunbar in 1965 and had a son, but the marriage was
short-lived and she began an affair with Jagger that was one of the most
notorious and heavily publicized in Swinging ’60s Britain.
Her drug addiction, frankly chronicled later in her autobiography, brought
her career grinding to a halt for several years and she ended up living on the
streets of London.
Her reputation was firmly re-established in 1979 with the release of the
critically acclaimed album "Broken English".
After another bout of addiction, she recovered and re-invented herself in the
’80s as a jazz and blues singer.
Her career was given a further fillip in the ’90s when she performed the
works of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.
She also carved out an acting career in both films and on stage — from
Ophelia in Hamlet to a leather-clad motorcyclist alongside Alain Delon in the
French film "Girl On A Motorcycle".
