Nathalie Baye, prolific star of French and Hollywood cinema, dies aged 77 | Film
French movie star Nathalie Baye, who starred in Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, died at the age of 77, her family said on Saturday.
A stalwart of French cinema, Baye appeared in nearly 80 films and took home the César for best actress, France’s equivalent of an Oscar, four times, three years from 1981 to 1983. Baye died of Lewy body dementia at his home in Paris on Friday evening, his family told AFP.
Baye’s career has recently led to an increase in high-profile roles internationally; These include playing Leonardo DiCaprio’s mother in Catch Me If You Can and a French aristocrat in the Downton Abbey sequel A New Era. He also worked with Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan, who cast him in the films Laurence Anyway and It’s Only the End of the World.
Baye had a five-year relationship with rock and roll singer Johnny Hallyday, nicknamed the “French Elvis”, whose death in 2017 was declared a national mourning. Their daughter, Laura Smet, is also an actor and, along with Baye, played fake versions of themselves in the popular series Call My Agent!
Baye was born in Normandy in 1948 to bohemian parents who were both painters. After struggling with dyslexia, she left school at 14 and went to Monaco to learn dancing. His breakthrough came in the 1970s, when he worked with directors such as François Truffaut (who served as continuity supervisor on Day for Night), Maurice Pialat, and Claude Sautet.
She played a major role in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1980 film Every Man for Himself, for which she won the César award for best supporting actress, and then made an international breakthrough playing Gérard Depardieu’s wife in The Return of Martin Guerre. However, Baye’s best-known first role was as a sex worker in Bob Swaim’s famous 1982 thriller La Balance, for which she again won the César award. Une liaison pornographique, whose English title was An Affair of Love, won her the best actress award at the Venice film festival in 1999.
