On the evening of March 16, local time in France, Belgian actress Émilie Dequenne, who won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for the movie "Rosetta", died of illness at the age of 43. Later that day, her family and agent announced on social media the sad news that she had died in a French hospital. The cause of death was a rare but extremely malignant adrenal cortical carcinoma. It was only more than a year since she was diagnosed with the disease in August 2023 and underwent emergency surgery.
On May 14, 2024, local time, in Cannes, France, Emilie De Quinn attended the red carpet of the opening ceremony of the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Visual China Photo
Emilie Deguinn was born on August 29, 1981 in Belleuil, a small town in western Belgium. She has had a strong interest in acting since she was a child. When she was in middle school, she practiced her acting skills in an amateur drama troupe. At the age of 17, she was selected by the famous Belgian Dardenne brothers to play the ill-fated 18-year-old girl Rosetta in the movie "Rosetta". At the 52nd Cannes Film Festival held in 1999, "Rosetta" defeated the popular "All About My Mother" and won the Palme d'Or; and Deguinn's acting skills also won the unanimous recognition of the jury led by Canadian director David Cronenberg, and won the Best Actress Award. Interestingly, at the French Film César Awards held the following year, Deguinn lost to Audrey Tautou in "Venus Beauty Salon" in the Best New Actress unit.
Emilie Dequin won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for Rosetta.
In the years that followed, De Queen, like many Belgian-born actors, has been active in the more mature French film industry, with two or three new works released every year. She has starred in big productions such as "Wolf Covenant", Claude Berri's comedy "Sexy Nanny", and André Téchiné's "The Girl on the Train" adapted from real social events. At the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, she won the Best Actress Award in the Un Certain Regard section for her outstanding performance in the Belgian film "Lose Your Mind".
DeQuinn in "The Girl on the Train."
As she gets older, DeQuinn has fewer and fewer opportunities to play the leading female role, but the supporting roles she played in popular works such as "See You in Heaven", "What You Said, What You Do", and "Intimacy" are also impressive. In 2021, she finally won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for "What You Said, What You Do".
DeQuinn won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Anything Said or Done.
Until last year, DeQuinn became the leading actress again, playing a strong mother in the disaster film "As Long As You Live". At the Cannes Film Festival, she revisited the place to promote the film and also talked about her illness in an interview. Earlier in April 2024, she announced on social media that her condition had greatly improved, but she was still under close observation and rehabilitation treatment. She was in Cannes at the time and looked quite good. She also laughed and said that the title of the new film "As Long As You Live" was purely coincidental, because the film was shot in early 2023, and she didn't know that she had a serious illness. It was purely because of her experience as a mother that attracted her to participate in this work.
Emily DeQuinn (center) plays a strong mother in "Just Live."
At the end of last year, she announced the relapse of her illness and said sadly that she had to ask the film company to replace her because she already had a work on hand. It seemed that her film career had completely left her.