Émilie Dequenne, who won best actress at age 17 at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in the Belgian film “Rosetta,” died on Sunday at the Gustave Roussy hospital in Villejuif, France. She was 43.
Her death was confirmed by Marie-Laure Calmette, an assistant to Ms. Dequenne’s longtime agent, Danielle Gain. Ms. Dequenne had been diagnosed with adrenal cancer.
Ms. Dequenne was starring in her first film role when she played the lead in “Rosetta,” a 1999 film directed by the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The film, about a working-class teenager fighting to hang onto a job, won the Palme d’Or, the top honor at Cannes.
Ms. Dequenne revealed in October 2023 that she had been diagnosed with adrenocortical carcinoma, a rare and aggressive adrenal cancer.
She talked about her diagnosis in an interview on the television show “Sept à Huit” on the French network TF1 that aired in December 2024. After her initial symptoms, she said, she had blood tests and scans, and eventually, faced the discovery of a large mass. She spoke about the need to be candid about her illness and the loneliness that it caused.
Over her career, Ms. Dequenne appeared in nearly 50 films and won numerous awards, including a César, one of France’s top film honors, for best supporting actress in “Love Affair(s),” (“Les Choses Qu’on Dit, les Choses Qu’on Fait”), a 2020 film directed by Emmanuel Mouret.
But she was perhaps best known for her roles in the 2012 drama “Our Children” (“À perdre la raison”), by the Belgian director Joachim Lafosse, and “Rosetta.” When she auditioned for the role in “Rosetta,” she made an immediate impression, Luc Dardenne recalled in an interview with the French radio station FranceInfo that aired on Monday.
“The first day she shot in front of a real camera, she managed to bring the whole team together,” Mr. Dardenne told the Belgian broadcaster RTBF. “That’s what happened, and it got better and better as the shoot progressed.”
Ms. Dequenne was born in Beloeil, Belgium, on Aug. 29, 1981. She studied drama at the Académie de Musique et des Arts de la Parole de Baudour in Belgium. She began her acting career at a company based in a region of Belgium near the border with France.
She is survived by her husband, Michel Ferracci, and a daughter, Milla Savarese, with her former partner, the Belgian DJ Alexandre Savarese.
Last May, while her cancer was in remission, she celebrated the 25th anniversary of “Rosetta” at the Cannes Film Festival. She also promoted a new film, “Survive,” released last year. Most recently, she appeared in “TKT,” a film about bullying that is set at a Belgian high school.
