Émilie Dequenne Dies: Belgian Cannes Best Actress Winner Was 43​on March 16, 2025 at 11:18 pm

Belgian actress Émilie Dequenne, who first achieved fame with her 1999 Cannes d’Or-winning, big screen debut in Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s drama Rosetta, has died at the age 43.

The actress, who revealed she was battling a rare adrenal gland cancer in October 2023, died in hospital on the outskirts of Paris on Sunday evening, her agent Danielle Gain announced to AFP.

Born on August 29, 1981, Dequenne studied at Belgium’s Music & Spoken Word Academy in Baudour from an early age, taking up drama there at the age of 12, alongside joining the La Relève Theater troupe.

She landed her first cinema role at age 17 in Rosetta. She clinched Best Actress at Cannes in 1999 for her performance as the titular teenager living in a caravan with an alcoholic mother in the film, which also won the Dardenne brothers their first Palme d’Or.

Dequenne enjoyed a high-profile career throughout the 2000s, appearing in Christophe Gans’ historic thriller The Brotherhood of the Wolf and Claude Berri’s The Housekeeper as well as making a foray into English-language movies with Mary McGuckian’s costume drama The Bridge of San Luis Rey, starring Gabriel Byrne, Robert de Niro and Cathy Bates.

Dequenne’s 61 acting credits also include her more recent Best Supporting Actress César-winning performance in Emmanuel Mouret’s couple drama The Things We Say, The Things We Do.

Other career highlights, included Joachim Lafosse’s 2012 psychological family drama Our Children, opposite Tahar Rahim; Lucas Belvaux’s 2018 rise of the far-right drama This Is Our Land, for which she won a Belgian Magritte for Best actress, and Lukas Dhont’s Oscar-nominated film Close.

Dequenne was last seen on the big screen last fall in the Belgian high school bullying drama TKT in the role of the mother of young victim who lands in a coma.