She died Friday evening at her home in Paris from Lewy body dementia, her family said.
French actress Nathalie Baye poses on May 19, 2016 during a photocall for the film “It’s Only The End Of The World (Juste La Fin Du Monde)” at the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France.
French film star Nathalie Baye, a multi-Cesar Award winner who starred in Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me if You Can,” has died at the age of 77, her family told AFP on Saturday.
Baye, a stalwart of French cinema, starred in some 80 films and took home the best actress Cesar — France’s equivalent of the Oscars — four times, including three years running from 1981 to 1983.
She died Friday evening at her home in Paris from Lewy body dementia, her family said.
This file photograph shows singer Johnny Hallyday (L) and French actress Nathalie Baye posing with their baby Laura Smet, who was born on November 15, 1983, at the American hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in L’Etang-l#La-Ville on December 1, 1983.
The neurodegenerative disease can alter mood, movement, and provoke hallucinations.
Baye’s career saw a late surge of internationally high-profile roles, including playing Leonardo DiCaprio’s mother in “Catch Me if You Can” and a French aristocrat in “Downton Abbey 2”.
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She also worked with Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan, who cast her as one of his many difficult mothers in “Laurence Anyways” and “It’s Only the End of the World”.
French actress Nathalie Baye (C) and her partner, singer and actor Johnny Hallyday (R), arrive at the Majestic Hotel to attend the screening of the film “Détective”, in which they starred under the direction of Jean-Luc Godard, during the Cannes Film Festival on May 10, 1985.
“Une liaison pornographique” — whose English title was the more demure “An Affair of Love” — won her the best actress prize at the Venice film festival.
Baye had a five-year relationship with rocker Johnny Hallyday, dubbed the “French Elvis”, whose death in 2017 sparked national mourning.
Their daughter, Laura Smet, is also a famous actress, who starred alongside Baye as a mock version of themselves — bickering, competitive, yet very close — in the hit series “Call My Agent!”.
Canadian director Xavier Dolan (2ndL) kisses the hand of French actress Nathalie Baye (2ndR) as they arrive on May 19, 2016 with French actress Marion Cotillard (L) and French actor Vincent Cassel for the screening of the film “It’s Only The End Of The World (Juste La Fin Du Monde)” at the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France.
Baye was born in 1948 in Normandy to bohemian parents who were both painters. But 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 arthouse directors such as Francois Truffaut, Maurice Pialat, and Claude Sautet, and then in the 1980s with Jean-Luc Godard.
