In 1970, her high-profile relationship with Mick Jagger ended. This period was marked by her losing custody of her son, Nicholas, and a subsequent suicide attempt. For much of the early-to-mid 1970s, Faithfull lived on the streets of London’s Soho district. She suffered from severe heroin addiction and anorexia nervosa, largely disappearing from the public eye except for occasional, fleeting appearances.

During these years, her once-pure, melodic soprano voice was permanently altered by heavy smoking, drug use, and severe laryngitis. It transformed into the deep, husky, and “scorched” rasp that would later define her career.

Despite her struggles, Faithfull made a few attempts to record music. In 1971, she recorded an album titled Masques (later released in 1985 as Rich Kid Blues), but it was shelved at the time due to her unstable condition. In 1976, she released Dreamin’ My Dreams, a country-influenced album. While it was mostly ignored in the UK, it became a massive hit in Ireland, reaching #1 and proving that she still had an audience.

The end of the decade saw one of the greatest “resurrection” stories in rock history. Faithfull emerged with Broken English (1979), an album that shed her 1960s pop persona entirely. It was aggressive, dark, and politically charged, blending New Wave, reggae, and rock. “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” became one of her signature tracks, capturing the middle-aged disillusionment that resonated with a new generation of listeners. The song “Why’d Ya Do It?” was so explicit and raw that it was banned in several places, but it solidified her status as an artist who refused to be censored or silenced.

Marianne Faithfull’s 1970s were effectively a bridge from being “Mick Jagger’s girlfriend” to being a formidable, self-directed artist. Here’s a collection of 30 amazing portraits of Faithfull in the 1970s:

Polonium-210 is a highly radioactive alpha-emitter. While alpha particles cannot penetrate the outer layer of human skin, the substance is extremely dangerous if inhaled or swallowed. Because polonium-210 has a very short half-life (138 days), almost all the radioactivity vanished within a few years of the ring being manufactured. Any surviving rings today are virtually non-radioactive (having decayed into stable lead), though they no longer produce the “flashes” they once did.

Washington spent the summer of 1976 in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, in summer stock theater performing Wings of the Morning, the Maryland State play, which was written for him by incorporating an African-American character/narrator based loosely on the historical figure from early colonial Maryland, Mathias de Sousa.

Shortly after graduating from Fordham, Washington made his screen acting debut in the 1977 made-for-television film Wilma which was a docudrama about sprinter Wilma Rudolph, and made his first Hollywood appearance in the 1981 film Carbon Copy. He shared a 1982 Distinguished Ensemble Performance Obie Award for playing Private First Class Melvin Peterson in the Off-Broadway Negro Ensemble Company production A Soldier’s Play which premiered November 20, 1981.

A major career break came when he starred as Dr. Phillip Chandler in NBC’s television hospital drama St. Elsewhere, which ran from 1982 to 1988. He was one of only a few African-American actors to appear on the series for its entire six-year run. He also appeared in several television, motion picture and stage roles, such as the films A Soldier’s Story (1984), Hard Lessons (1986) and Power (1986). In 1987, he starred as South African anti-apartheid political activist Stephen Biko in Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom, for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 1989, Washington won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a defiant, self-possessed ex-slave soldier in the film Glory. That same year, he appeared in the film The Mighty Quinn; and in For Queen and Country, where he played the conflicted and disillusioned Reuben James, a British soldier who, despite a distinguished military career, returns to a civilian life where racism and inner-city life lead to vigilantism and violence.