French actress Nathalie Baye, known for having portrayed all kinds of roles under the direction of prestigious directors such as François Truffaut, Xavier Dolan, Bertrand Blier, or Claude Chabrol, has died at the age of 77, her family announced to several French media outlets this Saturday. Winner of four César Awards of French cinema, one of the most popular faces on the French big screen, Baye died this Friday at her Paris home, after a long illness she had suffered during the past year.
Versatile until the end of her career, the actress was characterized by daring all kinds of roles, from drama to comedy, but also by her escape from stardom, despite being the partner of rocker Johnny Hallyday for four years, with whom she had a daughter, the filmmaker Laura Smet.
After studying dance in Monaco and New York, the young woman born in a village in Normandy on July 6, 1948, returned to Paris at 18 to learn acting and after a career in theater caught Truffaut’s attention, who gave her a leading role in Day for Night, a springboard to her success. From that success, roles on the big screen multiplied, with Claude Sautet (Mado), Marco Ferreri (The Last Woman), Maurice Pialat (The Mouth Agape), among others, as well as a new collaboration with Truffaut in The Man Who Loved Women.
Read more Sánchez advocates for progressive unity against Trump: “Democracy must not be taken for granted”
Winner of the César for Best Supporting Actress in 1981 and 1982, her consecration came the following year when she won Best Actress for A Strange Romance, by Pierre Granier-Deferre. A fourth award came in maturity for The Little Lieutenant, by Caroline Vaudieu, in 2006.
Nathalie Baye supported the fight against climate change and sided with actor Gérard Depardieu in 2023 when she signed, along with other artists, an op-ed to support him when he was accused of sexual assault, a crime for which he was later convicted.
