Actress remains in ‘deep coma’ after assault

FRENCH actress Marie Trintignant remained in a “deep coma” last night after allegedly being beaten by her rock star boyfriend, who was being questioned by police.

At the request of her family, a second operation was performed on her in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius yesterday.

It was a bid to ease pressure on her brain caused by cerebral haemorrhaging and bring the 41-year-old star out of the coma, said Dr Robertas Kvascevicius.

But Trintignant’s condition remained unchanged after the “surgery of hope”, he said.

French brain surgeon Stephane Delajoux assisted in the operation.

“Unfortunately, I think her days are numbered now because she is in a deep coma, and the surgical decompression that was performed wasn’t enough,” Delajoux said.

Trintignant was being kept alive by artificial respiration and that her chances of survival were “minimal”.

Trintignant’s father, film star Jean-Louis Trintignant, 72, flew to Lithuania a day after the first operation.

The actress’s 17-year-old son Roman, and her mother, film director Nadine Trintignant, were also in Vilnius.

Police identified her boyfriend, French rock singer Bertrand Cantat, as a suspect, and began to question him yesterday about the alleged attack on Sunday in the Domina Plaza Hotel in Vilnius, Cantat, lead singer of the popular French band Noir Desir (Black Desire), had been admitted to the same hospital on Sunday after drinking “dangerously high” amounts of alcohol, police said.

Lithuania’s Lietuvos Rytas newspaper quoted a doctor who claimed to have examined Cantat, as saying the singer’s right fist was bruised.