Actress Émilie Dequenne is facing a relapse of her cancer, diagnosed more than a year ago.
Combative, she nevertheless underwent very heavy treatment which kept her away from filming.
She is the subject of Audrey Crespo-Mara’s “Portrait of the Week” this Sunday, December 1, in “Sept à Huit”.
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Seven to eight
Émilie Dequenne feels a vital need to talk about her cancer and recount the fight she has been waging for more than a year against the disease. While she had announced the start of her remission last April, she must face a new ordeal this fall: “I was seeing my doctor to check the progress of the treatment. Unfortunately, it is not progressing well. There is a part of my cancer that responds to medication and another that does not respond, or even progresses. And the The part that advances is greater than the part that reduces.”
A very rare cancer
The 43-year-old Belgian actress must therefore restart chemotherapy and be hospitalized. “I’m going to lose my hair again.”she explains in the “Sept à Huit” video at the top of this article. After only a few months of respite, his previous life is once again about to be shaken up, and perhaps for a long time: “We only talk about remission, never about cure.”
In August 2023, this mother discovered this cancer somewhat by chance, an adrenocorticaloma, which affects a gland above the kidney. “I was filming. I had a stomach ache, I felt very tired.” A battery of examinations reveals a “masse”which turns out to be an extremely rare tumor, affecting one to two people in a million. At this announcement, she thinks of her parents, more than of her husband or her daughter. “I was terrified, I had the impression that I was given six months to live”remembers Émilie Dequenne. She quickly underwent a very major operation.
Unfailing optimism
Revealed in Rosetta by the Dardenne brothers at just 17 years old, a film for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, the cinema prodigy had to stop all her projects. “At the time, it was violent, my world collapsed”she admits, on the verge of tears, adding: “I am very surrounded, but in suffering, there is a kind of extreme solitude.” Yes the“carelessness” she misses her, she remains optimistic: “I'm very lucky despite everything. An extraordinary destiny.”
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The thirty medications she has to take every day make her dizzy and put her in a mental fog, going so far as to prevent her from reading a book. On a daily basis between her home and the hospital, Émilie Dequenne, finding her smile again, nevertheless wishes to pay tribute to the doctors who follow her and to the staff “absolutely brilliant” from the Gustave Roussy Institute (Val-de-Marne), the first cancer center in Europe.
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