The music star was also an electrifying screen presence, from The Girl on a Motorcycle to Marie Antoinette

• Marianne Faithfull, singular icon of British pop, dies aged 78
• Marianne Faithfull was a towering artist, not just the muse she was painted as

On the screen and also in life, Marianne Faithfull experienced something similar to her contemporary Anita Pallenberg – the condescension of being treated like an icon or a muse. Maybe her very real success in music ruled her out of a serious acting career in the eyes of some, but Faithfull for a while occupied the epicentre of the late-60s pop culture zeitgeist, for an intense flashbulb moment she found herself in the overlapping worlds of music, movies and the explodingly important world of celebrity itself.

The famous photograph of her in 1967 on a couch between Alain Delon and Mick Jagger absolutely captures her magnetism: Delon is entranced by her, Jagger (her boyfriend) is jealous, looking grumpily down: she and Delon were starring together in The Girl on a Motorcycle by the British cinematographer and director Jack Cardiff in which she was the super-sexy rock chick in a leather body suit whose zipper Delon would lasciviously pull down with his teeth.