{"id":539528,"date":"2026-04-19T14:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T14:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/539528\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T14:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T14:35:10","slug":"nathalie-baye-prolific-star-of-french-and-hollywood-cinema-dies-aged-77-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/539528\/","title":{"rendered":"Nathalie Baye, prolific star of French and Hollywood cinema, dies aged 77 | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

The French film star Nathalie Baye, who starred in a string of highly regarded French films as well as Steven Spielberg\u2019s Catch Me If You Can<\/a>, has died at the age of 77, her family said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Baye, a stalwart of France\u2019s domestic cinema, starred in about 80 films and took home the best actress C\u00e9sar, France\u2019s equivalent of the Oscars, four times, including three years running from 1981 to 1983. She died on Friday evening at her home in Paris from Lewy body dementia, her family told AFP.<\/p>\n

Baye\u2019s career included a late surge of internationally high-profile roles, including playing Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s mother in Catch Me if You Can and a French aristocrat in the Downton Abbey<\/a> sequel, A New Era. She also worked with the Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan, who cast her in Laurence Anyways and It\u2019s Only the End of the World.<\/p>\n

Baye, centre, with G\u00e9rard Depardieu in The Return of Martin Guerre. Photograph: Cinetext\/France 3\/Allstar<\/p>\n

Baye had a five-year relationship with the rock and roll singer Johnny Hallyday, nicknamed the \u201cFrench Elvis\u201d, whose death in 2017<\/a> led to national mourning. Their daughter Laura Smet is also an actor, and starred alongside Baye as mock versions of themselves in the hit series Call My Agent!<\/p>\n

Baye was born in 1948 in Normandy to bohemian parents who were both painters. After struggling with dyslexia, she left school at 14 and went to Monaco to learn dance. Her breakthrough came in the 1970s when she teamed up with directors such as Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut (for whom she played a continuity supervisor in Day for Night), Maurice Pialat and Claude Sautet.<\/p>\n

Baye as Paula Abagnale, Frank Abagnale\u2019s mother, in Catch Me If You Can. Photograph: Globe Photos\/ZUMA Press Wire\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

She was cast in a prominent role in Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s 1980 film Every Man for Himself, for which she won the best supporting actress C\u00e9sar, then made an international breakthrough as G\u00e9rard Depardieu\u2019s wife in The Return of Martin Guerre. Baye\u2019s best-known early role, however, was as a sex worker in Bob Swaim\u2019s celebrated 1982 thriller La Balance, for which she again won a C\u00e9sar award. Une liaison pornographique \u2013 whose English title was An Affair of Love \u2013 won her the best actress prize at the Venice film festival in 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The French film star Nathalie Baye, who starred in a string of highly regarded French films as well…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-539528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}