Wikipedia

Bianca Jagger

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Pérez-Mora and the second or maternal family name is Macías.
Bianca Jagger
Jagger in 2014
Born
Blanca Pérez-Mora Macías[1][2][3][4][5]

(1945-05-02) 2 May 1945 (age 80)[6][7][8][9]
Managua, Nicaragua
Occupations
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1971; div. 1978)​
ChildrenJade Jagger

Bianca Jagger (born Blanca Pérez-Mora Macías; 2 May 1945)[1][7][8][9][10] is a Nicaraguan social activist, human rights advocate, and a former actress.[11] She gained international prominence in the 1970s through her marriage to Mick Jagger, the frontman of the Rolling Stones. Renowned for her influential style, Jagger was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame in 1976.

A longtime activist, Jagger has been closely associated with human rights, environmental, and social justice causes. She currently serves as a Council of Europe goodwill ambassador, founder and chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council of Amnesty International USA,[12][13] and a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust.[14][15]

Early life and education

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Jagger was born in Managua, Nicaragua, on 2 May 1945. Her father was a successful import-export merchant and her mother a housewife.[16] They divorced when Bianca was ten and she stayed with her mother, who had to take care of three children on a small income. At the age of 16, she changed her name from Blanca to Bianca.[1] She received a scholarship to study political science in France at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. She was also influenced by Gandhi's non-violent success and Eastern philosophy at large. She travelled extensively in India.[17]

Film career

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Jagger on the television programme After Dark, 1988.

As her marriage to Mick Jagger deteriorated in the mid-1970s, Bianca Jagger sought to establish an independent professional identity and pursued acting.[18] She made her screen debut alongside Dennis Hopper in Flesh Color (Couleur chair) (1978).[19] That same year, she appeared as Martini in All You Need Is Cash (1978), a satirical television film featuring the Rutles, and expanded into American cinema with a supporting role as Corrine in The American Success Company (1980).[20] She later appeared as the sheik's sister in the ensemble comedy The Cannonball Run (1981).

In the 1980s, Jagger continued acting in both film and television. She appeared in In Our Hands (1984) and made guest appearances on several television series, including Miami Vice (1985, episode "Free Verse"), Street Hawk (1985, episode "The Unsinkable 453"), Hotel (1986, episode "Separation"), and The Colbys (1987, episode "Betrayal"). By the late 1980's, Jagger largely withdrew from acting to focus on human rights advocacy and philanthropy.

Activism

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In 1981, Jagger was part of a US congressional delegation[21][22][23][24] stationed at a UN refugee camp in Honduras. At one point during her official visit, the entire staff saw about 40 captured refugees marched away at gunpoint towards El Salvador by a death squad.[21][22][24] Armed with nothing but cameras[23] to document the raid, Jagger and the delegation trailed the squad along a river towards the Honduran-Salvadoran border.[21] When both groups were within auditory range of each other, Jagger and the staff shouted[24] at the M16 rifle-equipped raiders: "You will have to kill us all!"[21][24] The squad considered the situation, approached the group, relieved them of their cameras, and released the cache of captives.[23] A transformation had thus begun for Jagger.[22] In subsequent interviews,[21][22][24] Jagger has recounted this incident as "a turning point in my life".[21][23][24]

Bianca Jagger founded the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, which she chairs. She returned to Nicaragua to look for her parents after the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake, which destroyed Managua, the capital, leaving a toll of more than 10,000 deaths and tens of thousands homeless.

In early 1979, Jagger visited Nicaragua with an International Red Cross delegation and was shocked by the brutality and oppression that the Somoza regime carried out there. This persuaded her to commit herself to the issues of justice and human rights.

Jagger with Hafsat Abiola and Willem Dafoe at the Dropping Knowledge project's Table of Free Voices in Berlin, 2006.

In the 1980s, she worked to oppose US government intervention in Nicaragua after the Sandinista revolution. She has also opposed the death penalty and defended the rights of women and of indigenous peoples in Latin America, notably the Yanomami tribe in Brazil against the invasion of gold miners. She spoke up for victims of the conflicts in Bosnia and Serbia. Her writings were published in several newspapers (including The New York Times and the Sunday Express). From the late 1970s, she collaborated with many humanitarian organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

She was also a member of the Twentieth Century Task Force to Apprehend War Criminals, and a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust. She gave a reading at the start of the memorial service in London's Westminster Cathedral, which was timed to coincide with the funeral in Brazil of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot eight times on a tube-train after being mistaken for a suicide bomber in London. In March 2007, she became involved with Sarah Teather and the campaign to close Guantanamo Bay.

In March 2002, Jagger travelled to Afghanistan with a delegation of fourteen women, organised by Global Exchange to support Afghan women's projects. On 16 December 2003, Jagger was nominated Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador.[25]

From 2007 to 2009, she was chair of the World Future Council. On 7 July 2007, Jagger presented at the German leg of Live Earth in Hamburg. In July 2008, she was a signatory to a petition to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales to allow the wider celebration of the traditional Latin Mass.[26] In January 2009, Jagger addressed some 12,000 people who rallied in Trafalgar Square in protest against an Israeli offensive in the Gaza several days earlier.[27]

She is a "messenger", more accurately termed ambassador, for the environmental organization 350.org.[28]

Bianca Jagger engaging for human rights in Tibet, Vienna, 2012.

She has served as IUCN's Global Ambassador for the Bonn Challenge, a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of the world's degraded and deforested lands by 2020.

On 8 October 2010, she spoke at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) 2010 world conference on moving beyond petroleum and "Crimes against Present and Future Generations".[29]

In June 2012, along with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Airbus, Jagger launched an online campaign called the Plant a Pledge initiative, which aims to restore 150 million hectares of forest around the world by 2020.[30]

On 21 November 2013, Jagger delivered the prestigious 12th annual Longford Lecture titled "Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, and the Culture of Impunity: achieving the missing Millennium Development Goal target", chaired by Jon Snow.

Prior to the 2015 UK general election, she was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.[31]

Personal life

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Jagger has dual nationality, as a naturalized British citizen and a citizen of Nicaragua.

Jagger had a public reputation as a jet-setter and party-goer in the 1970s and early 1980s, being closely associated in the public mind with New York City's nightclub Studio 54. She was famously photographed on a horse at Studio 54 on her 32nd birthday in 1977.[32]

Jagger with Jack Ford and Andy Warhol seated on the Truman Balcony at the White House, 1975.

Jagger also became known for her friendship with pop artist Andy Warhol. In his 1979 book Exposures, Warhol said, "Bianca Jagger is one of the most Socially Diseased people I know. She's almost as bad as me—and I'm terminal. She loves to go out every night to the hottest spot in town and make a big dramatic entrance in a big dramatic dress."[33] During the summer, Jagger rented the main cottage at Warhol's estate Eothen in Montauk, New York.[18] She frequently appeared on the cover of his Interview magazine, and they interviewed President Gerald Ford's son Jack Ford at the White House in Washington, D.C. in 1975.[34][35][33] She also interviewed Steven Spielberg, Calvin Klein, and Yves Saint Laurent.[34]

Jagger caused a minor controversy in May 2012 when she took flash photographs during a performance of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach at the Barbican in London.[36]

Relationships and marriages

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In the late 1960s, Bianca Jagger dated actor Michael Caine.[37][38] They met in France, and she moved to England with him. Jagger later told People magazine in 1977 that "Caine was unkind, superficial, and kept me like I was his geisha," while Caine described Jagger as "one of the most intelligent girls in town."[39] She left him for French record executive Eddie Barclay.[39] She wouldn't marry Barclay because he had already been divorced.[18]

Bianca Jagger met Mick Jagger at a party after a Rolling Stones concert in France in September 1970.[40] On 12 May 1971, while she was four months pregnant, the couple married in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Saint-Tropez, France, and she became his first and only wife of a legal marriage. The couple's only child, a daughter named Jade, was born on 21 October 1971, in Paris, France. In May 1978, Bianca Jagger filed for divorce on the grounds of his adultery with model Jerry Hall.[41][42] Reflecting on the early years of her marriage, she said, "I played the wife. I was docile and subservient … but groupies weren't an easy thing to get used to. Mick is in some ways misogynist, because there are too many women available to him."[18] Although she was frequently photographed by paparazzi with male companions, she maintained that—aside from an off-and-on two-year affair with Ryan O'Neal—those encounters were never consummated.[18]

Jagger has two granddaughters from her daughter Jade: Assisi Lola (born in 1992) and Amba Isis (born in 1996), and a grandson born in 2014. She became a great-grandmother in 2014 through her granddaughter Assisi.[43]

Awards

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For her international work on behalf of humanitarian causes, Jagger has earned numerous awards, including:

Film and television

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Bianca also appeared in several movies and TV shows:

Notes

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References

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  1. ^ a b c Andersen, Christopher (2012). Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger. Robson Press. ISBN 978-1-84954-382-8.
  2. ^ Castro, Peter (4 June 1990). "Chatter". People. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  3. ^ "People, May 3, 1971". Time. 3 May 1971. Archived from the original on 4 November 2012. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
  4. ^ "Rolling Stones Booking Agent – Available for Concerts and Events Worldwide". Booking Entertainment. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  5. ^ "Famous Nicaraguans". Nicaragua Channel. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  6. ^ At the time of Bianca Jagger's marriage to Mick Jagger, it was reported that she was born in 1945, which is still cited as her birth year by most published sources. However, the charitable organisations with which she is affiliated currently use 1950.
  7. ^ a b Smilgis, Martha (2 May 1977). "A Rock 'n Roll Marriage". People. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
  8. ^ a b "Divorced". Time. 12 November 1979. Archived from the original on 20 September 2010. Retrieved 27 August 2009.
  9. ^ a b Birthday: Bianca Jagger. Chase's Calendar of Events. 2007. ISBN 9780071468183. Retrieved 27 August 2009.
  10. ^ "Corrections by Bianca Jagger" ICorrect, 9 March 2011. Retrieved on 29 September 2011.
  11. ^ "Split is Now Official for Mick, Bianca". The Milwaukee Sentinel. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Newspapers, Inc. UPI London. 3 November 1979. p. 3. Retrieved 2 August 2013.[permanent dead link]
  12. ^ "Bianca Jagger joins Slovene president's Darfur initiative". Ljubljana: bbc.co.uk. Slovenian Press Agency. 19 January 2006. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
  13. ^ Boyle, Chris (18 April 1996). "Bianca Jagger leads talk at Schweitzer Institute". Record-Journal. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
  14. ^ "Bianca Jagger – Amazon Charitable Trust Trustees". amazoncharitabletrust.org. Archived from the original on 28 January 2013. Retrieved 2 December 2012.
  15. ^ Norman, Philip (2012). Mick Jagger. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0062200327. Retrieved 2 December 2012.
  16. ^ Weiss, Michael J. (29 March 1982). "Bianca Jagger Trades Social Life for Social Activism". People. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
  17. ^ "Bianca Jagger Biography, Bio, Profile, pictures, photos from". Netglimse.com. Archived from the original on 25 January 2010. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  18. ^ a b c d e Smilgis, Martha (2 May 1977). "Bianca Is Tired of Playing Zelda to Jagger's Scott — For Her, The Green Light Is a Career". People Weekly. 7 (17): 50–52, -57-58.
  19. ^ Harris, Art (6 January 1978). "Hoppers Riding Easy In New Film". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 19 December 2025.
  20. ^ Banks-Smith, Nancy (28 March 2017). "The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash review - archive, 1978". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 19 December 2025.
  21. ^ a b c d e f Byrnes, Sholto (19 April 2004). "Bianca Jagger: Jagger's edge". The Independent. UK. Retrieved 3 May 2010.[dead link]
  22. ^ a b c d Chaundy, Bob (14 February 2003). "Bianca Jagger: Champion of peace". BBC News. Retrieved 3 May 2010.
  23. ^ a b c d DeParle, Jason (4 June 1995). "Bob (Torricelli) and Bianca (Yes, That One) to the Rescue". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
  24. ^ a b c d e f "From Studio 54 to the front line". The Independent. UK. 28 October 2001. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
  25. ^ ""Goodwill Ambassadors" spreading the Council's message". Council of Europe. Archived from the original on 10 June 2007.
  26. ^ "Leading Catholics petition for Latin Mass". The Daily Telegraph. London. 24 July 2008. Archived from the original on 21 October 2011. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
  27. ^ McVeigh, Tracy; Ben Quinn (4 January 2009). "Thousands join march to protest against Israeli action". The Observer. London. Archived from the original on 30 January 2009. Retrieved 19 February 2009.
  28. ^ "International day of demonstrations on climate change". CNN.com. October 26, 2009. Archived from the original on 27 October 2009. Retrieved 26 October 2009.
  29. ^ Jagger, Bianca (7 October 2010). "Now is the Time to Move Beyond Petroleum". HuffPost. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
  30. ^ "IUCN and Airbus Join Hands for Largest Land Restorative Initiative". International Business Times. 17 June 2012. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
  31. ^ Elgot, Jessica (24 April 2015). "Celebrities sign statement of support for Caroline Lucas – but not the Greens". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
  32. ^ music, Guardian (25 April 2015). "Bianca Jagger: 'I did not ride the horse into Studio 54. I just got on it'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 19 December 2025.
  33. ^ a b Warhol, Andy; Colacello, Bob (1979). Exposures. Penguin Random House. pp. 25–28. ISBN 978-0-09-139200-0.
  34. ^ a b "When Francisco Met Bianca". Harper's BAZAAR. 18 October 2011. Retrieved 19 December 2025.
  35. ^ Nugent, Mitchell (29 July 2020). "Thirstory: Back in the Saddle with Disco Queen Bianca Jagger". Interview Magazine. Retrieved 19 December 2025.
  36. ^ Higgins, Charlotte (8 May 2012). "Flashpoint: Bianca Jagger and theatre critic's spat at the opera". The Guardian.
  37. ^ Graham, Sheilah (30 July 1968). "Michael Caine's girl is Nicaraguan student". The Montreal Star. p. 17. Retrieved 19 December 2025.
  38. ^ Roxon, Lillian (23 July 1972). "Mick Jagger: A Basically Serious Boy". Daily News. pp. 9 Leisure. Retrieved 18 December 2025.
  39. ^ a b Wrigley, Tish (14 February 2014). "Top Ten Old Loves". AnOther. Archived from the original on 24 March 2023. Retrieved 18 December 2025.
  40. ^ Fonseca, Nicholas (18 May 2001). "Mick and Bianca Jagger: Remembering their futile stab at marriage". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
  41. ^ "Landlord files to have Bianca Jagger evicted". CNN. 6 April 2005. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
  42. ^ "Bianca Jagger". HuffPost. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
  43. ^ Reed, Ryan (19 May 2014). "Mick Jagger Becomes a Great-Grandfather". Rolling Stone.
  44. ^ "Human Rights Civil Rights Defended". WRMEA. September–October 2002. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  45. ^ a b "Members of CCRF". www.ccrf.in. 22 April 2004. Retrieved 27 April 2010. [dead link]
  46. ^ "Ecuador The Chevron Toxic Legacy: Take Action". Amazon Watch. 2010. Archived from the original on 7 September 2004. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  47. ^ "Biography of Bianca Jagger". Council of Europe. 2010. Archived from the original on 1 May 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  48. ^ a b "Biography of Bianca Jagger" (PDF). unep. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 July 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  49. ^ "Bianca Jagger To Address Third World Health Issues". uconn. 2006. Archived from the original on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  50. ^ "Champion of Justice awards presented to Bianca Jagger and PBS Frontline producer Ofra Bikel". www.criminaljustice.org. 4 November 2000. Archived from the original on 7 June 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  51. ^ Byrnes, Sholto (19 April 2004). "Bianca Jagger: Jagger's edge". The Independent. UK. Retrieved 27 April 2010.[dead link]
  52. ^ "Hall of Fame". mchf. 2008. Archived from the original on 16 November 2007. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  53. ^ International Service Past Winners www.internationalservice.org.uk Archived 18 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  54. ^ "Bianca Jagger Receives 'Right Livelihood Award 2004'". quaker.org. Quaker Council for European Affairs. January 2005. Archived from the original on 8 April 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  55. ^ Krieger, David (14 November 2006). "2006 Annual Dinner Speech: World Citizenship Award to Bianca Jagger". wagingpeace.org. Archived from the original on 28 October 2009. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  56. ^ a b "Advisory Council – Detailed Biographies". www.srilankacampaign.org. Archived from the original on 23 September 2009. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  57. ^ "SHS" (PDF). Simmons College. Summer 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 May 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
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