“My ordeals taught me to be afraid of death,” she confided one day to L’Express. “Or more exactly to be afraid that life will stop. It has taken on such a flavor for me”.
Fate caught up with her at 53. New hospitalization in intensive care. His second heart fails in turn.
“The Warrior is less Warrior…”
“Waiting for my 3rd,” she wrote on Instagram on June 8. With a humor tinged with weariness: “I need all your positive vibes. Because the Warrior is less Warrior…”
If, only a few days later, she gets a new heart, the transplant is a failure.
A name in homage to Val André
Born November 29, 1968 in Paris, Anne-Charlotte Pascal grew up in a wealthy family. His father develops calculation software, his mother is a pianist.
First castings as a teenager. She opts for the pseudonym “Valandrey”, a tribute to Val André, the seaside resort of her Breton childhood.
Small, slender but quite a temperament. The dark-haired girl with blue laser eyes lights up the film “Rouge Baiser” (1985) by Véra Belmont, her first role.
She embodies, in France during the Cold War, Nadia, a young rebel who militates in the Young Communists and sees her ideal waver following a romantic encounter (Lambert Wilson).
At not even 18 years old, the crushing blow
Huge success. He is predicted a fate like Sophie Marceau, two years his senior. She won the Silver Bear for best actress in Berlin, was nominated for the César for best female hope.
Glory, parties, carelessness… A few days before she turned 18, she learned that she had contracted HIV. With a “gothic prince”, member of a famous rock group, she will say.
She kept her HIV status silent until 2005 and the publication of her autobiography “Love in the blood”, a big bookstore success (180,000 sales) adapted into a TV movie.
My pounds meant: I’m healthy
“The disease, this bitch, I kept her at a distance,” she confides to L’Express. She is steadily gaining weight. “My pounds meant: I’m healthy.”
She only informs her parents and lovers. Approached for the main role of “White Wedding” (1989), she also shares her secret with the director. Vanessa Paradis is chosen…
First HIV-positive heart transplant patient in France
“The sequins fly away like ashes… Something had broken, the cinema had left me”.
Admittedly, she bounced back on television by playing from 1991 to 2000 in the series “Les Cordier, judge et cop” (up to 11.4 million viewers) or in “Tomorrow belongs to us” (2017-2019). But will never have the career to which she seemed promised.
And she has to fight every day. Her triple therapy exhausted her heart, and one was transplanted to her in 2003. She thus became the first HIV-positive heart transplant recipient in France.
Tara, her daughter born senonegative in 2000
“Coming out of my transplant, I weighed 35 kg. I divorced, moved, I no longer had a job or a social life. That was a lot”.
She clings on, especially for her daughter Tara, born HIV-negative in 2000 from her “will to survive”. As during this new blow in 2008. A heart attack. His heart stops beating for 22 seconds.
It goes up the slope, in particular thanks to psychoanalysis. Finds the way to the boards, starts singing and continues in writing, with a seventh book published in 2022 “Reconcile with yourself”.
Coming out of my transplant, I weighed 35 kg. I divorced, moved, I no longer had a job or a social life. It was a lot
She is also actively involved in favor of organ donation and becomes the godmother of the “Greffe de vie” foundation.
Resolutely optimistic, she retained a certain bitterness from the years when she had felt abandoned.
“Today, when Stromae sings regarding his suicidal thoughts or Florent Pagny talks regarding his fight once morest cancer, we support them and that’s good. Me, at the time, I was left alone in my corner”.
