Charlotte Gainsbourg left Paris to escape the pain of sister's death

Actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg moved to New York City to avoid painful memories of her sister's death in Paris.

The French star's fashion photographer half-sibling, Kate Barry, fell to her death from her fourth floor apartment in the city back in December, 2013, and Charlotte struggled to cope with the loss while she was living in France.

“As soon as someone asks, ‘Why did you move here,’ I have to say, ‘My sister died!'” Charlotte tells Vulture of her decision to relocate to the Big Apple. “I have to say everything instead of keeping things for myself. And people are very uncomfortable with that here, and I don’t care.”

Charlotte admits her childhood home in Paris is too painful to visit these days now that Kate is no longer alive: "I crystallised the pain in Paris,” she explains. “As soon as I go back, it comes back, it’s very much alive, and it’s about her being dead.”

However, she finds relief from the grief in New York City, where she has happier memories of Kate: "Here, it’s more my childhood with her," she notes, "It’s something less real here. I was able to think about it all the time, but there was some kind of a weird distance of thinking about it, as if it was a dream.”

Charlotte wrote about the trauma of losing her sister while creating songs that appear on her new album, Rest.

“All of the album is very selfish and personal,” she shares, “but I never thought I was being too personal or asking would I be embarrassed? I’m not more embarrassed than when I’m naked in a film.”