Emilie Dequenne, Award-Winning Actress, Dies at 43, Less Than 2 Years After Cancer Diagnosis

Emilie Dequenne, the actress best known for her titular role in the movie Rosetta, has died. She was 43.

Dequenne’s longtime agent, Danielle Gain, informed the news agency AFP that the Belgian actress had died at a hospital on the outskirts of Paris, France on the evening of Sunday, March 16, Deadline reported. Her tragic death comes less than two years after she revealed her rare adrenal gland cancer diagnosis in October 2023.

“Quelle injustice!! You have been an example to us all, with your extraordinary strength, your courage,” Dequenne’s press representative Charlotte Tourret wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of the actress at the 76th Cannes Festival and a playful video.

“You are an inspiring woman, a great soul, a great actress, I remember your smiling eyes and your light. I love you forever my Emily 🕊️Milla, Michel, Danielle, Isabelle… I’m thinking about you so much,” Tourret added.

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Having studied from an early age at Belgium’s Music & Spoken Word Academy in Baudour, Dequenne cinched her role in Rosetta by the Dardenne brothers at the age of just 17, Deadline reported.

Luc Dardenne told French radio station FranceInfo on Monday that Dequenne had arrived at the casting session “heavily made up” and was “magnificent” in the scenes, according to the outlet.

Her impressive performance as a teenager, who lived in a trailer park with her alcoholic mother, won her the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. The movie also won a prestigious Palme D’Or.

“It’s terrible, life is disgusting sometimes,” Luc Dardenne said of Dequenne’s death, according to Deadline. “That’s too young, she still had so much to do.”

The award-winning actress achieved 61 credits on IMDB including French language films such as The Girl on the Train which was released in 2009, and Our Children, which debuted in 2012.

Following her cancer diagnosis in 2023, Dequeene shared that she was in remission in April 2024. She went on to tragically reveal that she had relapsed while speaking to French news outlet TF1 in December that year.

Her final project was the English language thriller, Survive, which was released last year, according to the French news outlet Le Monde.

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Speaking to The Action in one of her last interviews, Dequeene said, “I didn’t know I was sick by the time I was shooting the movie, and I got sick almost like six or eight months later. I’m still fighting, I’m still on chemo for now, but I’m okay, I’m okay.”

Last month, she marked World Cancer Day by urging people to “take care of yourself.” The post which was one of her final shared on Instagram included several photos taken throughout her treatment for the disease alongside a “thank you” to those who had supported her.

Dequenne is survived by her husband Michel Ferracci and daughter Milla, whom she shares with her previous partner Alexandre Savarese, Variety reported.