Acclaimed Actress Dies of Rare Cancer: Emilie Dequenne Was 43

Belgian actress Emilie Dequenne, who won the best actress Cannes Film Festival prize for her role in the movie Rosetta, has died. She was 43.

Dequenne’s longtime agent, Danielle Gain, confirmed to the AFP that the actress passed away at a hospital just outside Paris on Sunday, March 16, Deadline reported.

The star had been battling adrenocortical carcinoma, a rare adrenal gland cancer, and had announced her diagnosis in October 2023. In a Feb. 4 update, the actress told her followers that she was leaving the hospital after 13 days, writing, “What a fierce battle.”

Born in Belœil, Belgium in August 1981, Dequenne was just 17 when she landed the titular role in 1999’s Rosetta. The film, directed by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, follows a teen girl who, after losing her job at a factory, struggles to find work to avoid falling into the same traps as her alcoholic mother. Her performance earned Dequenne the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. The movie also won a prestigious Palme D’Or.

“It’s terrible, life is disgusting sometimes. That’s too young, she still had so much to do,” Luc Dardenne told French radio station FranceInfo following the actress’ passing. “Acting was her life. She was an actress who could have done many things and whom people loved. She was intuitive, but she worked hard, she loved working, starting over, finding something else and we loved it too.”

After Rosetta, Dequenne went on to appear in dozens of other titles, including French-language films like The Girl on the Train (2009) and Our Children (2012), her role in the latter winning her the best actress prize in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section. Her other credits include Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), The Light (2004), and The Pack (2010), among numerous others, per her IMDb profile. Her final credit was in the English language thriller, Survive. The film released in 2024, with Dequenne traveling to the Cannes film festival to promote the film, The Guardian reported.

Paying tribute to the late star on Instagram, Dequenne’s press representative Charlotte Tourret wrote, “You have been an example to us all, with your extraordinary strength, your courage. You are an inspiring woman, a great soul, a great actress, I remember your smiling eyes and your light. I love you forever my Emily.”

According to Variety, Dequenne is survived by her husband Michel Ferracci and daughter Milla, whom she shared with her previous partner Alexandre Savarese.