the news that French actor Alain Delon86, has started the procedures to undergo assisted suicide inevitably evokes the case of singer Françoise Hardy, 78, who, suffering from terminal pharyngeal cancer that has turned her days “into hell”, He also recently made public his desire to receive help to die with dignity.
The disease has thus brought together the destinies of two French film and song icons whose paths have crossed on numerous occasions in the last six decades (the most recent, with the duet recording of the song ‘Modern Style’ for Hardy’s 2006 album ‘Parèntheses’). The situation of both is, however, quite different: while Delon can benefit in this last hour from his status as a citizen resident in Switzerlanda country in which assisted suicide is legal, the claim of the author of ‘Tous les garçons et les filles’ comes into head-on collision with French law (Just a year ago, the National Assembly voted overwhelmingly against a bill to decriminalize euthanasia).
Hardy and Delon are the last names of a long but mostly still secret list of artists who have claimed assistance to end their days.
The wrath of the Belgian Church
One of the most notorious and controversial cases was that of the Belgian novelist, poet, playwright and filmmaker Hugo Claus, who, suffering from Alzheimer’s, requested a death by euthanasia when the disease was still in an early stage (Belgian law allows assisted suicide only if the person has the ability to make a conscious decision). Claus’s death on March 19, 2008, at age 78, provoked a strong condemnation from the Belgian Catholic Church and sparked an intense national debate.
As well Austrian actor Herbert Fuxwho throughout his prolific career alternated work with directors of the caliber of Ingmar Bergman, Volker Schlöndorff and Werner Herzog with roles in B movies, spaghetti westerns and erotic comedies, decided turn his goodbye to life into an act of militancy and revealed that he had requested the services of Dignity, a Swiss association that, with the assistance of qualified doctors and nurses, helps people with terminal illnesses and severe depressive disorders to die. Fux passed away in Zurich on March 13, 2007, at the age of 79.
More recent is the death of Guy Bedos, Celebrated French Actor, Screenwriter, and Comedian who for decades actively participated in the cause of the decriminalization of euthanasia and who was part of the honor committee of the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity. Suffering from Alzheimer’s-like dementia, he died on May 28, 2020 at the age of 85. After a few months, his son, also an actor Nicolas Bedos, revealed that in the last hours he helped his father to contact a doctor offered to facilitate the patient’s transition to death.
Martínez Reverte’s plea
In Spain, one of the voices that has spoken out most lucidly and vehemently in recent years in favor of assisted death is that of the writer and journalist Jorge Martinez Reverte, former collaborator of EL PERIÓDICO, who passed away just a year ago. Reverte wrote a lot in the 72 years that he was allowed to live, but probably nothing as personal and heartfelt as the article in which he recounted how he had helped his mother dievictim of terminal cancer. The article was distinguished in 2009 with the Ortega y Gasset journalism award, but it also led its author to a court to testify in front of a court, since all this occurred before the legislative reform that in June 2021 decriminalized euthanasia in Spain.
It is precisely the approval of this Organic Law for the Regulation of Euthanasia that protects decisions such as the Catalan actress Carme Elías, another victim of Alzheimer’swho just two weeks ago revealed, in an interview with Núria Navarro, that she has left in writing his will to die with dignity. “I do not deserve to be prostrated in a chair, depending on someone to feed me and do my hygiene,” he assured. My family would respect my will. I intend to defend the right”.