{"id":592783,"date":"2026-04-19T01:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T01:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/592783\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T01:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T01:31:15","slug":"downton-abbey-catch-me-if-you-can-actress-was-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/592783\/","title":{"rendered":"Downton Abbey, Catch Me If You Can Actress Was 77"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNathalie Baye<\/a>, the French actress known for her roles in the film Downton Abbey<\/a>: A New Era and Catch Me If You Can, has died. She was 77.<\/p>\n

\n\tBaye died Friday at her home in Paris from complications of Lewy body dementia, her family told the Agence France-Presse.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn on July 6, 1948, in Mainneville, Eure, Normandy, Baye began her career in the 1970s, appearing in more than 80 films. She graduated from France\u2019s Conservatoire national sup\u00e9rieur d\u2019art dramatique (National Academy of Dramatic Arts) in 1972 and made her film debut that year in Robert Wise\u2019s Two People.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe later appeared in films such as Truffaut\u2019s Day for Night, The Man Who Loved Women and The Green Room, Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s Every Man for Himself, Detective and Le Retour de Martin Guerre and Steven Spielberg\u2019s Oscar-winning Catch Me If You Can, where she played the mother of Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s Frank Abagnale Jr. and opposite Tom Hanks.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer work has also been recognized critically, as she was a 10-time\u00a0nominee of the prestigious C\u00e9sar Award and four-time winner. She won for\u00a0Every Man for Himself\u00a0(1980),\u00a0Strange Affair\u00a0(1981),\u00a0La Balance\u00a0(1982) and\u00a0The Young Lieutenant\u00a0(2005). In 2022, she appeared in the movie Downton Abbey: A New Era, where she shared the screen with Maggie Smith<\/a> in one of her final film roles.\u00a0Mother Valley (2023) was Baye\u2019s last film role.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe shared a daughter, Laura Smet, who is also an actress, ,with the late French singer Johnny Hallyday. Baye and Laura starred together on a 2015 episode of Call My Agent! (Laura has booked a part in the upcoming fourth season of HBO\u2019s The White Lotus.)<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing the news of her death, French President Emmanuel Macron took to social media to pay tribute. \u201cWe loved Nathalie Baye so much,\u201d he wrote on X<\/a> Saturday morning. \u201cShe accompanied, through her voice, her smiles, and her reserve, these last decades of French cinema, from Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut to Tonie Marshall. An actress with whom we loved, dreamed, and grew up. We think of her family and her loved ones.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nathalie Baye, the French actress known for her roles in the film Downton Abbey: A New Era and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[51071,88,2091,258602,10756],"class_list":{"0":"post-592783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-downton-abbey","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-international","11":"tag-nathalie-baye","12":"tag-obituaries"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}