Marianne Faithfull, singer, actress and Rolling Stones muse, dies at 78

(KRON) – Singer, actress and 1960s icon Marianne Faithfull has died at the age of 78.

As a singer, Faithfull was best known for her 1964 debut single "As Tears Go By," and her acclaimed 1979 album "Broken English." As an actress, she co-starred with Alain Delon in the 1968 cult classic "The Girl on A Motorcycle."

Faithfull, however, was perhaps best known as the on-again, off-again girlfriend and muse of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger during the band's 1960s hey-day.

Faithfull and Jagger began seeing each other in 1966 and became one of the most glamorous and notorious couples of “Swinging London," with Faithfull once declaring that if LSD “wasn't meant to happen, it wouldn't have been invented." Their rejection of conventional values was defined by a widely publicized 1967 drug bust that left Jagger and Richards briefly in jail and Faithfull identified in tabloids as “Naked Girl At Stones Party," a label she would find humiliating and inescapable.

“One of the hazards of reforming your evil ways is that some people won’t let go of their mind’s eye of you as a wild thing,” she wrote in “Memories, Dreams and Reflections," a 2007 memoir.

Jagger and Richards often cited bluesmen and early rock ‘n rollers as their prime influences, but Faithfull and her close friend Anita Pallenberg, Richards’ longtime partner, also opened the band to new ways of thinking. Both were worldlier than their boyfriends at the time, and helped transform the Stones' songwriting and personas, whether as muses or as collaborators.

"It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of the singer, songwriter and actress Marianne Faithfull," read a statement from her music promotion company Republic Media, cited by the BBC. "Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family."

"She will be dearly missed," the statement continued.

Faithfull struggled with well-publicized substance abuse problems earlier in her career. She also contracted COVID-19 in 2020 and spoke of struggling with long-term effects of the illness.

No cause of death was immediately listed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.