Celebrity Biographies
Johnny Hallyday
France was shocked after the disappearance of one of its idols from the world of music. Singer and actor Johnny Hallyday died on December 5, 2017 at the age of 74 in Marnes-la-Coquette due to lung cancer. “He died with courage and dignity,” declared Laeticia, his widow. “There is a bit of Johnny in all of us,” said Emmanuelle Macron, the country’s president. “We will not forget his name, nor his voice, nor, above all, the interpretations with that sensitive lyricism. He belongs today fully to the history of French music. He brought a part of America into our national pantheon.”
Born on June 15, 1943 in the French capital, then occupied by the Nazis, Jean-Philippe Smet was abandoned by his mother after his father left them stranded, so he was raised by his aunt, Desta, and her husband. , Lee Hallyday, variety artist from whom he took his stage name. These lived many years in London. There the young man was marked after going into the cinema to see Loving You , starring Elvis Presley , which convinced him that he had to become a rock and roll star.
After working unloading trucks, he bought his first guitar at 16, and began performing in clubs. In 1960 “Laisse les filles” was published, his first single, and the LP “Hello Johnny”. He would soon become the French Elvis, becoming one of his country’s biggest stars. His compatriots called him “our Johnny”.
It can be said that Johnny Hallyday surpassed his idol, Elvis, cinematically speaking, since he shot better movies. He began by appearing briefly in The Diabolics , Henri-Georges Clouzot ‘s successful thriller , but later starred in the action film Full Throttle (1968), alongside Eddie Constantine . One of the Three Sergios, the kings of the spaghetti-western, Sergio Corbucci , recruited him as the protagonist of The Specialist , an excellent sample of the subgenre, where he played a gunman who investigated the lynching of his brother.
He was present in a film by Jean-Luc Godard , Detective , and in Adventure is Adventure , by Claude Lelouch , while in 1987 he became the French Mel Gibson , headlining Terminus , a not too inspired imitation of Mad Max .
He shot his best work directed by Patrice Leconte , The Man on the Train , where he was a mysterious solitary guy who, after getting off the express, plans to rob a bank. But before he will meet a retired professor ( Jean Rochefort ), about to undergo a complex operation. Each of them would have wanted to take the life of the other. In recent years he had appeared briefly in titles such as Purple Rivers 2 or The Pink Panther 2 , and he starred in Fuk Sau , a shooter by Johnnie To , the Hong Kong filmmaker, where his character had to take revenge after the murder of his family.
He monopolized the covers of magazines and newspapers for his relationship with the singer and actress Sylvie Vartan , whom he married in 1965, although he divorced at the age of 10. He later married four other times, two of them with the same woman. He has been together with the last one, Laeticia Hallyday, since 1996. Father of four children, two are Vietnamese whom he adopted.