There are artists for whom children are more of a brake on a career than anything else and who prioritize professional life over their family life, and there are others. Among these others, we find David Hallyday. The son of Sylvie Vartan and Johnny Hallyday, a fan of music from an early age (dogs don’t make cats), has always favored the private sector over the public. His three children, Ilona and Emma, the 27 and 25-year-old daughters he had with his first wife Estelle Lefébure, and Cameron, 18, the youngest fruit of his love with his wife Alexandra Pastor, David Hallyday will make them always come first, no matter how old they are. And that’s not regarding to change.
In the pages of the magazine Gala, whose journalists went to meet the Hallyday clan in his house in Portugal, David Hallyday confided in his life as a patriarch, surrounded by his wife, his son and his oldest daughter Ilona, just mother of a little Harrison (with her husband Kamran) if we are to believe the information of the weekly. If they are not complete, all are happy to be together, David in particular.
Where others are no more transformed than that by fatherhood, David Hallyday is ready to stop everything by meeting his children: “Young dad, I don’t see my life turned upside down, I’m a little losing ambition for what I’m doing, he confides. And I stop my French solo career, to be closer to my daughters.” It would seem that David does not want his children to suffer from his absence as he suffered from that of his dad Johnny Hallyday when he was younger. His half-sister Laura Smet, whom the rocker had with the actress Nathalie Baye, confirms it: “He is very ‘family’. He makes up for things, shortcomings and he does not want his children to have these shortcomings.”
Johnny, an “episodic father”
David Hallyday does not hide it. Being the son of a star like Johnny hasn’t been easy: “I have an episodic memory of my father. When he came home, there were sometimes great moments but he was always surrounded… and not always in good condition.he continues. And me, that posed a problem for me because I felt a kind of instability.” For Laura Smet, David put this aspect of his relationship with Johnny to music in his title Steve McQueen. A truth that David has always denied: “There are texts that don’t lie. He’s too humble to admit he’s suffered.”
This time that he was never able to catch up with Johnny, David Hallyday wants to offer it to his children, his grandchildren and, why not, to the generations that will follow if he has the opportunity. Alexandra Pastor’s husband does not want to reproduce the pattern he knew with his dad, with whom he nevertheless experienced a rapprochement thanks to the title blood for blood : “It is this project that makes it possible for us to reconnect, to spend real intimate moments together, not with fifteen people who had other interests around. He was a different guy… alone.“It is out of the question to wait for the last years of your life to enjoy your loved ones.