During the latter part of the
1960s, Seberg used her high-profile image to voice support for the
NAACP and supported
Native American school groups such as the
Mesquakie Bucks at the Tama settlement near her home town of Marshalltown, for whom she purchased $500 worth of basketball uniforms. She also supported the
Black Panther Party. FBI director
J. Edgar Hoover considered her a threat to the American state. Her telephone was tapped and her private life has been closely observed. She knew about it and felt chased. In
1970, when she was seven months
pregnant, FBI created a false story to leak to the media that the child she was carrying was not fathered by her second husband,
Romain Gary but by a member of the
Black Panthers Party. The story was reported by
Joyce Haber of the
Los Angeles Times newspaper., and
Newsweek magazine She gave birth to a girl on
23 August, but the infant died two days later. In a press conference she presented the press with a picture of her
fetus to demonstrate that the child did not have a father of
African heritage. Seberg stated that the
trauma of this event brought on premature
labor and her child was
stillborn. The child was named Nina Gary; the baby was actually fathered by Carlos Navarra. According to her husband, after the loss of their child she suffered from a deep
depression and became
suicidal. She also became dependent on alcohol and
prescription drugs. She made several attempts to take her own life including throwing herself under a train on the
Paris Métro.
Seberg's problems were compounded when she went through a form of marriage to an
Algerian playboy,
Ahmed Hasni, on
May 31, 1979. The brief ceremony had no legal force because she had taken film director
Dennis Charles Berry as her third husband in
1972 and the marriage was still valid In July, Hasni persuaded her to sell her opulent apartment on the Rue du Bac, and he kept the proceeds (reportedly 11 million
francs in cash), announcing that he would use the money to open a Barcelona restaurant. The couple departed for Spain but she was soon back in Paris alone, and went into hiding from Hasni, who she said had grievously
abused her.
In August 1979, she went missing and was found dead 11 days later in the back seat of her car in a Paris suburb. The police report stated that she had taken a massive
overdose of
barbiturates and
alcohol (8g per litre). A suicide note ("Forgive me. I can no longer live with my nerves") was found in her hand, and suicide was ultimately ruled the official cause of death. However, it is often questioned how she could have driven to the address in the
16th arrondissement with that amount of alcohol in her body, and without the distance glasses she always maintained she absolutely needed for driving. She was not yet 41 years old when she died. Her second husband, Romain Gary, with whom she had a son, Alexandre Diego Gary, also committed suicide a year after her death.
Seberg was interred in the
Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France.
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