Marianne Faithfull diagnosed with breast cancer

Marianne Faithfull has been diagnosed with breast cancer. File picture / Reuters

Her battles with hard drugs have been legendary and she struggled for artistic recognition in the shadow of the Rolling Stones, but yesterday it was announced that iconic singer and actress Marianne Faithfull faces the biggest fight of her life - against breast cancer.

Publicists for Faithfull, 59 and on the brink of a major tour, disclosed yesterday that the cancer, said to be in its early stages, had been diagnosed two days ago, in France, where she has a home.

Her tour has been rescheduled for next year.

In a statement, Faithfull, whose career spans four decades, said: "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."

Her spokesman, Rob Partridge, told BBC radio: "Obviously she was very upset, but now she's in big fighting mood and determined to beat the cancer."

Faithfull's tour was due to have started in Paris on October 7, with concerts in the United States, Canada, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Hungary and Spain before ending at the Pigalle Club in London on December 18.

Her situation has similarities with that of singer Kylie Minogue who was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer in May last year as she was about to embark on her biggest tour.

Following surgery and chemotherapy, she is expected to resume performing later this year.

Christine Fogg, chief executive of the charity Breast Cancer Care, said: "We wish her well with her treatment and hope to see her performing again soon. Kylie's experience of the disease significantly helped get the breast awareness message out to more people and we hope Marianne's experience helps reach even more."

After her discovery as an angelic-faced teenager among a Rolling Stones audience by their manager Andrew Loog Oldham in 1964, Faithfull has had one of the more interesting and long-lived careers in pop, eventually revelling in the image of the damaged chanteuse, complete with gravelly voice - she has been a lifelong smoker - and suitably world-weary demeanour.

Although born on Hampstead, in north London, her father was a British military officer and her mother a Viennese noblewoman of Jewish-Austrian descent.

Faithfull herself was educated at a Roman Catholic girls school.

She quickly became a household name in the 1960's: not only for a string of catchy singles - the most famous of which was As Tears Go By, written for her by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards - but also for her relationship with Jagger himself.

Together they became one of the most photographed couples of the Swinging Sixties.

Faithfull herself achieved even more notoriety when she was famously found naked and wrapped in a fur rug during the legendary police drugs raid on Richards's home in Surrey.

The suggestion, stemming from the incident, that Faithfull had also been involved in a sexual act relating to a Mars Bar was later vehemently denied by both herself and members of the Stones.

Faithfull was more than just an adornment to the Stones.

A book she gave Jagger inspired Sympathy for the Devil, one of their most notorious songs, while the lyrics to the song Wild Horses stemmed from the words she used after a barbiturate overdose.

She is also said to have written all the words to the song Sister Morphine, also on the album Sticky Fingers.

They couple parted in 1970.

During the 1970's, an addiction to heroin and barbiturates spiralled and she spent time living rough in Soho.

Rehabilitation came with the critically acclaimed album Broken English in 1979, when her more mature, throaty voice was unveiled.

Although she had another spell in a drug addiction clinic in the late 1980's, she continued to produce more well received jazz and blues flavoured albums and worked with artists as diverse as Damon Albarn, Nick Cave, Tom Waits and David Bowie.

As an actress, she has appeared in Girl on a Motorcycle, alongside Alain Delon and played Ophelia opposite Nicol Williamson in Hamlet, as well as a number of other minor roles.

She also appears as Marie Antoinette's mother in the Sofia Coppola bio-pic staring Kirsten Dunst, due for release next month.

- INDEPENDENT