Entertainment

Marianne Faithfull, rock ’n' roll chanteuse and Rolling Stones muse, dies at 78

Published

1 year ago

January 30, 2025

Marianne Faithfull, rock ’n' roll chanteuse and Rolling Stones muse, dies at 78

Marianne Faithfull, the singer, actress, steely-eyed “It” girl of Swinging ‘60s London and subject of numerous Rolling Stones songs including “Wild Horses” and “Sister Morphine,” opened her 1994 autobiography with a disclaimer: “Never apologize, never explain — didn’t we always say that? Well, I haven’t and I don’t.”

Faithfull, who once described herself as “the drug-drenched Duchy of Chelsea,” died peacefully in London on Thursday accompanied by her family, a spokesperson confirmed to The Times. She was 78 and previously had been suffering from the long-term effects of a nearly fatal COVID-19 infection in 2020. A cause of death was not revealed.

“She will be dearly missed,” the spokesperson told The Times in a statement.

Faithfull’s unflinching songs, adaptations and roller-coaster life illustrated her unapologetic approach. Described by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness as “interesting … difficult and strange,” Faithfull was descended from Austro-Hungarian aristocrats and first earned fame in 1964, at age 17, with “As Tears Go By,” written by a young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Across 50 years as an artist, she issued solo albums including 1979’s bracing comeback, “Broken English,” 1987’s Hal Willner-produced “Strange Weather” and 2018’s “Negative Capabilities” with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

Along the way, she channeled her cigarette-stained rasp to interpret the work of Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, Leonard Cohen, PJ Harvey, Neko Case, Dolly Parton, Morrissey and others.

An artistic force, Faithfull reinvented her musical style with each passing decade, eagerly embracing contemporary sounds and collaborators as engines for her distinctive alto, one that grew more menacing the older she got.

She was a soprano when she met her future boyfriend Jagger at a party in London also attended by Richards, Paul McCartney and Peter Asher. Scouted by Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham, Faithfull was in the recording studio with him, Jagger and Richards a few weeks later.

A regular in London’s gossip press of the 1960s, Faithfull was soon at the center of the thriving music and fashion scenes. She sang backing vocals on the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” and the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” and hung with Bob Dylan during his historic 1965 run of shows in England. In 1967, Faithfull was famously photographed draped in a fur rug during a drug bust at Richards’ estate.

With sharp wit, keen intellect and disarming beauty, Faithfull accessed rooms where millions of Beatles-loving teens longed to be. She wrote in her autobiography of hanging out with Dylan and the Beatles during their peak success: “Jesus, how could I have ever thought these scared little boys were gods?”

Her lineage may have prepared her for the bohemian life. Faithfull was born Dec. 29, 1946, to a mother, Eva, who was a baroness. She descended from a line that included Leopold Baron von Sacher Masoch, who coined the term “masochism” in his erotic book “Venus in Furs.”

Faithfull’s father worked as a spy for British intelligence and was “a truly obsessed eccentric,” she wrote in “Faithfull: An Autobiography.” That ran in the family too. Her paternal grandfather, a sexologist, invented a device called “the frigidity machine,” designed to “unlock the primal libidinal energy” and cure the world’s ills.

After the success of “As Tears Go By” (the Rolling Stones recorded their version a year later), Faithfull continued her recording career and, until 1970, her relationship with Jagger. She characterized those years in her autobiography as: “Desultory intellectual chitchat, drugs, hip aristocrats, languid dilettantes and high naughtiness. I knew I was on my path!”

Most traveled during the 1970s was the path that led to drugs. She described her years homeless and strung out succinctly: “I took the train to London and didn’t return home for years, except for the occasional bath,” she wrote. Anonymous and penniless, she didn’t have a phone or an address. “I was incredibly frail. I never ate. I lost my looks.”

Absent a record contract or musical support, she only made the news as the junkie ex-girlfriend or disgraced aristocrat.

Faithfull got clean in the mid-1970s and returned to upend expectations in 1979 with “Broken English.” Her voice lower from damaged vocal cords, too many cigarettes and other addictions, the album arrived shortly after the British punk explosion, but it wasn’t a punk album per se. It was just hard, unflinching, vulgar, honest.

In addition to the title track, Faithfull transformed John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” into a feminist anthem and drew wide-eyed attention for “Why’d You Do It,” a harsh, profanity-laden indictment directed at an unfaithful lover. The album earned Faithfull her only Grammy nomination, for female rock vocal performance.

“The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” from “Broken English,” scored a memorable midnight drive through the desert in the 1991 movie “Thelma and Louise.” Rolling westbound, Susan Sarandon’s Louise plays the Shel Silverstein-penned song on the car stereo, and Faithfull sings of a desperate woman who, at the age of 37, realizes “she’d never ride / through Paris in a sports car/ with the warm wind in her hair” and decides to change the plot.

Though she never earned chart success in the United States, Faithfull was a critics’ darling throughout her career. Her 1987 album, “Strange Weather,” saw her interpreting Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” Leadbelly’s “I Ain’t Goin’ Down to the Well No More” and Dr. John’s “Hello Stranger.”

“Faithfull: An Autobiography” was published in 1994. The first of three memoirs, it recounts her trysts and escapades with humor, brashness and power, and remains an essential music memoir. She issued studio albums at an even pace across the last 25 years of her life, one every few years with a new round of songs and a voice just a little more ragged.

Courtney Love sits next to Marianne Faithfull on a sofa

For her 2008 album, “Easy Come, Easy Go,” Faithfull covered songs by Judee Sill, Randy Newman, Brian Eno and Merle Haggard. Her rendition of Morrissey’s “Dear God, Please Help Me” hits its climax when Faithfull bellows at full volume, “There are explosive kegs / Between my legs / Dear God, please help me.”

The musician had a long, successful career as an actor as well. She performed Chekhov at the Royal Court Theatre, Shakespeare at the Roundhouse and Brecht and Weill at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

Most famously, Faithfull starred in “The Girl on the Motorcycle,” a sexually charged, LSD-inspired 1968 love story that became one of the first films to be given an X rating by the Motion Picture Assn. of America. She appeared as a vision in “Lucifer Rising,” a notorious 1972 cult film by Kenneth Anger, an experimental filmmaker in Los Angeles. In 2001, Faithfull played God in a memorable series of dream sequences in the British comedy “Absolutely Fabulous” (her longtime best friend, Anita Pallenberg, played the devil).

Faithfull was nominated as best actress at the 2007 European Film Awards for her role in “Irina Palm,” in which she stars as a grandmother who performs anonymous sexual favors to earn money for her grandson’s cancer treatment. In 2011, Faithfull was awarded Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France’s most esteemed cultural honors.

Her 2018 album, “Negative Capability” was typically adventurous. Teaming in a studio and living space with longtime Nick Cave collaborator Warren Ellis, the album saw her write songs with artists including Cave, Ellis, British songwriter Ed Harcourt and producer Rob Ellis. She told the Guardian that it was “the most honest record I’ve ever made. There are no hidden corners.”

She added, “What a joy, hanging out with those wonderful men.” That, of course, was a setting in which she often found herself, whether she invited it or not.

“My main priority in my head was always my work. But then, of course, the men came,” she explained, “and it wasn’t really what I wanted, but I was too pretty to be left alone.”

In 2021, she released “She Walks in Beauty,” a haunting spoken-word recording of Lord Byron and other British Romantic poets, the backing music — ambient at times — provided by Ellis, Eno, Cave and Vincent Segal. It was her 21st and final album

In her final years Faithfull, who was married three times, had her share of challenges. She broke her back in a fall in 2013 and a year later broke her hip. She was hospitalized for three weeks during the early days of the pandemic in 2020 when she tested positive for COVID 19.

Faithfull is survived by a son, financial writer Nicholas Dunbar, and three grandchildren.

Movie Reviews

Film reviews: ‘How to Make a Killing,’ ‘Pillion,’ and ‘Midwinter Break’

Published

4 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

‘How to Make a Killing’

Directed by John Patton Ford (R)

★★

“Trying to find your niche as a movie star isn’t easy,” said Frank Scheck in The Hollywood Reporter. Take Glen Powell. A year ago, the Twisters and Anyone but You star was being talked about as possibly the next
Tom Cruise. But he “stumbled badly” when he tried to play a macho action hero in November’s remake of The Running Man, and he’s now turned in a second straight box office flop. He took a risk with How to Make a Killing, playing a guy cheated by fate who we’re supposed to root for as he begins murdering off the seven rich relatives standing between him and an enormous inheritance. But c’mon. “Powell is charming, but he’s not that charming.”

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The movie “needed to pick a side,” said Jacob Oller in AV Club. It could have been “a clownish class comedy” or “bitter sociopathic satire,” but it winds up being neither, and “at the center of it all is Powell, making the
same face for an hour and 45 minutes, too unflappable to root for, too smug to magnetize as an inhuman American Psycho.” I’m not ready to give up on him, said Nick Schager in the Daily Beast. To me, he and co-star Margaret Qualley, who plays the femme fatale who eggs on the killing spree, come across as “such alluringly nasty delights” that this reworking of the 1949 black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets “ survives its potentially lethal missteps and works on its own limited terms.” Though its teeth aren’t as sharp as they should be, “it’s smart and spiky enough to leave a pleasurably painful mark.”

‘Pillion’

Directed by Harry Lighton (Not rated)

★★★★

While this gay BDSM rom-com from a rookie director “might sound niche,” said Amy Nicholson in the Los Angeles Times, “free yourself to see it and you’ll discover it’s a universal romance.” Former Harry Potter side figure Harry Melling stars as a shy singleton who’s figuring out what he wants in a relationship when he happens into a submissive-dominant entanglement with a tall, handsome biker played by Alexander Skarsgard. Soon, Melling’s Colin is obeying his lover’s every order, including by shaving himself bald and sleeping like a dog on the floor. But the “kinky-funny” screenplay, which won a prize at Cannes, makes sure we see that Colin is not stuck but growing.

While the movie’s sex scenes are “refreshingly graphic,” they’re “never used or shock value,” said Odie Henderson in The Boston Globe. “The real shock comes from how emotionally involved the characters become within the construct of their kink.” And when Colin brings his new lover
home to meet the parents, Skarsgard and Lesley Sharp, as Colin’s suburban London mom, do memorable work because “neither of them
approaches the scene in a way you’d expect.” Until the ending, which “feels a little neat,” said Zachary Barnes in The Wall Street Journal, the movie “proceeds with an assurance of tone that’s especially impressive for a first-time filmmaker handling material like this.” Harry Lighton’s debut “could have been simply shocking, revving its engine in sexed-up style. Instead, Pillion purrs.”

‘Midwinter Break’

Directed by Polly Findlay (PG-13)

★★

Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds “would be appealing to watch just fumbling for their reading glasses,” said Natalia Winkelman in The New York Times. Unfortunately, this “staid” drama about an aging Irish couple puts that claim to the test. A “slow-moving film with a sappy score and mellow mood,” Midwinter Break opens with Manville’s Stella surprising Hinds’ Gerry by arranging a spur-of-the-moment trip to Amsterdam. Alas, “precious little conflict occurs until long afterward.”

But while Polly Findlay’s adaptation of a Bernard MacLaverty novel is a “delicate” film, said Lindsey Bahr in the Associated Press, its impact can be profound “if you can get on its level.” Stella, a devout Catholic, has an ulterior motive for dragging Gerry abroad, and when she nervously proposes how she’d like to live more purposefully in retirement, “it feels earth-shattering.” This is a couple accustomed to leaving much unsaid,
including how the violence of the Troubles led them to flee Belfast years earlier for Scotland. Manville and Hinds give the movie everything they’ve got, said Caryn James in The Hollywood Reporter. In a scene in which Stella pours out her heart to a stranger, “Manville delivers one of her most magnificent performances, which is saying a lot.” Alas, the script lets them down, “not because it needs more action but because this ordinary couple’s problems seem so unsurprising, their inner lives so veiled.”

Entertainment

After ‘Yellowstone’ and a twist of fate, Luke Grimes rides again as Kayce in ‘Marshals’

Published

6 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

After ‘Yellowstone’ and a twist of fate, Luke Grimes rides again as Kayce in ‘Marshals’

This story contains spoilers for the pilot of “Marshals.”

When the curtain came down on “Yellowstone” last year, Kayce Dutton had finally found his happily-ever-after.

The youngest son of wealthy rancher John Dutton (Kevin Costner) had secured a modest cabin in a mountainous region where he could reside in secluded peace with his beloved wife, Monica (Kelsey Asbille), and son, Tate (Brecken Merrill), far from the turbulent dysfunction of his family.

“Kayce found his little peace of heaven, getting everything he ever wanted and fought for,” said Luke Grimes, who plays the soft-spoken Dutton in “Yellowstone.”

Grimes reprises the role in CBS’ “Marshals,” which premiered Sunday. But in the new series, Kayce’s serenity has been brutally shattered, forcing him to find a new path forward after an unimaginable tragedy.

The drama is the first of several planned spinoffs of “Yellowstone,” which became TV’s hottest scripted series during its five-season run. And while some familiar faces return and events unfold against the magnificent backdrop of towering mountains and lush greenery, “Marshals” is definitely not “Yellowstone” 2.0.

Luke Grimes as Kayce Dutton in “Marshals,” which combines the gritty Western flavor of “Yellowstone” with the procedural genre.

(Sonja Flemming / CBS )

In “Marshals,” Kayce joins an elite squad of U.S. Marshals headed by his Navy SEAL teammate Pete Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green). The drama combines two distinct brands — the gritty Western flavor of “Yellowstone” with the procedural genre, a flagship of CBS’ prime-time slate.

During an interview at an exclusive club in downtown Los Angeles, Grimes expressed excitement about dusting off his cowboy hat and boots, though he admitted to having initial concerns about whether the project was a fit.

“I had never watched a procedural before, so I had to do some homework on what that was,” Grimes said hours before the gala premiere of “Marshals” at the Autry Museum of the American West in Griffith Park. “And I just couldn’t wrap my head around it at first. In the finale, Kayce had ridden off into the sunset. So I thought, ‘Let him be, let him go.’ ”

Those doubts eventually ebbed away.

“To be honest, there was a part of me that didn’t want to let Kayce go just yet,” Grimes said. “Saying goodbye to him was really hard, so the opportunity to keep this going was something I couldn’t pass up. We get to show his backstory and also this other side of him that we didn’t see in ‘Yellowstone.’ ”

But this Kayce is a man in crisis. “Yellowstone” devotees will likely be shocked by the “elephant in the room” — the revelation in the pilot episode that Monica has died of cancer. The couple’s sexy and loving chemistry was a key element in the series while also establishing Grimes as a heartthrob.

“I think fans will be upset — and they should be,” Grimes said as he looked downward. “Kayce is very upset. It’s the worst thing that could have happened to him. But as much as I’m really upset not to work with Kelsey, it’s a good idea for the show.”

He added, “His dream life is no longer available to him. Now the only thing he has is his son, who is not so sure he wants the same life as Kayce. A big part of the season is Kayce learning how to manage all these new things — new job, being a single father.”

A bearded man with his hands in his jeans looking downward.

Executive producer and showrunner Spencer Hudnut (CBS’ “SEAL Team”) acknowledged in a separate interview that viewers may be stunned by the tragedy. “Real life intervenes for Kayce. Unfortunately it happens to so many of us.”

But he stressed that although Monica is physically gone, her presence will be heavily felt this season.

“She is guiding Kayce, and their relationship is moving forward,” Hudnut said. “His dealing with his inability to confront his grief is a big part of the season. It became clear that something horrible had to happen to put Kayce on a different path.”

As the development evolved, Grimes embraced the procedural concept: “This is a very different show and structure. This is an action show, very fast paced. I meet a lot of fans who say they really want to see Kayce go full Navy SEAL.”

Alumni from “Yellowstone” returning in “Marshals” include Gil Birmingham as tribal Chairman Thomas Rainwater and Mo Brings Plenty as his confidante Mo.

“Yellowstone” co-creator Taylor Sheridan, who had already spearheaded the prequels “1883” and “1923,” will further expand the “Yellowstone” universe later this month with “The Madison,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, about a New York City family living in Montana’s Madison River territory. Later this year, Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser will star in “Dutton Ranch,” reprising their respective “Yellowstone” roles as John Dutton’s volcanic daughter Beth Dutton and her husband, boss ranch hand Rip Wheeler.

Hudnut said fans of “Yellowstone” will recognize themes that were central to that series: “The cost and consequences of violence, man versus nature, man versus man.”

“We’re trying to tap into what people loved about ‘Yellowstone’ but to tell the story in a different framework,” he said. “The procedural brand is obviously very successful for CBS. And nothing has been bigger than ‘Yellowstone.’ So the challenge is, how do you marry those things?”

Taking on the lead role prompted Grimes to reflect on how “Yellowstone” transformed his life after co-starring roles in films like “American Sniper” and “Fifty Shades of Grey” and playing a vampire in the TV series “True Blood.”

“‘Yellowstone’ changed my life in many, many ways,” he said. “The biggest change is that I now live where we shot the show in Montana. The first time I went there, I would have never thought I would ever live there.

“I would come back to the city after shooting. But a little bit more each year, I felt more out of place here, and more peace and at home there. I’m a big nature person — I never was a big city person, but I had to be here to do what I wanted. But after the third season, my wife and I decided to move there. We wanted to start a family.”

The topic of a Kayce spinoff kept coming up during the filming of the finale, but “meanwhile we were having a baby, so that was the biggest thing on my plate.”

A man in a blue shirt standing with his arms crossed as horses with saddles graze in the background.

Grimes was also dealing with the off-screen drama that impacted production due to logistical and creative differences between Costner and Sheridan. Costner, who was the show’s biggest attraction, exited after filming the first part of the final season. His character was killed off.

Asked about the backstage tension, Grimes said, “I just tried to do my job to the best of my ability, and not get caught up in all that. It was sort of frustrating, but I felt lucky to have a job.”

He recalled getting a call from Sheridan about the plans for a spinoff: “He said, ‘I think you should talk to the guy who is going to be the showrunner. I’m not telling you to do it, and I’m not telling you not to do it. But Spencer is great and he has some good ideas.’ ”

Hudnut said Kayce “was always my favorite character. Also, Luke is not Kayce. Kayce is an amazing character, but Luke is really thoughtful and smart. He is a true artist and has an artist’s soul, while Kayce is kicking down doors and terrorizing people. And Luke has such a great presence. He can do so much with just a look to the camera. He is a true leading man.”

In addition to starring in “Marshals,” Grimes is also an executive producer. He pitched the opening sequence — a flashback showing Kayce in the battlefield. He also performs the song that plays over the final scene, in which he visits his wife’s grave. The ballad is from Grimes’ self-titled country album which was released last year.

“Luke’s creative fingerprints are all over the pilot,” Hudnut said.

Grimes said he does not feel pressure about being the first follow-up from “Yellowstone” to premiere.

“We’re not trying to make the same show, so no matter what happens, its a win-win,” he said. “I had a blast doing it.”

Movie Reviews

Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

Published

16 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it. The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026