Baye, French Actress in ‘Day for Night,’ ‘Downton Abbey,’ ‘Catch Me If You Can,’ Dies at 77

She won four César Awards throughout her long-standing career.

Nathalie Baye Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Imag

Born 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’s Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique (National Academy of Dramatic Arts) in 1972 and made her film debut that year in Robert Wise’s Two People.

She later appeared in Truffaut’s Day for Night, The Man Who Loved Women and The Green Room, Jean-Luc Godard’s Every Man for Himself, Detective and Le Retour de Martin Guerre.

In Spielberg’s Oscar-winning Catch Me If You Can, she played the mother of DiCaprio’s Frank Abagnale Jr. and opposite Tom Hanks.

Cesar Award: !0 Nominations, 4 Wins

She was a 10-time nominee of the prestigious César Award (French Oscar). She won 4 Césars for Every Man for Himself (1980), Strange Affair (1981), La Balance (1982) and The Young Lieutenant (2005).

In 2022, she appeared in the movie Downton Abbey: A New Era, where she shared the screen with Maggie Smith in one of her final roles.

Mother Valley (2023) was Baye’s last film role.

She 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’s The White Lotus.)

Following the news of her death, French President Emmanuel Macron took to social media to pay tribute. “We loved Nathalie Baye so much,” he wrote on X Saturday morning. “She accompanied, through her voice, her smiles, and her reserve, these last decades of French cinema, from François Truffaut to Tonie Marshall. An actress with whom we loved, dreamed, and grew up. We think of her family and her loved ones.”