The world of cinema and admirers of the actress will pay this Friday in Paris a final tribute to Nathalie Baye, who died on April 17 at the age of 77, before her burial “in strict privacy”.
The ceremony will be held at 10:30 a.m. in the Saint-Sulpice church, in the heart of the 6th arrondissement where the actress lived.
The mass, which will be open to anonymous people, should bring together many members of the cultural world around Nathalie Baye’s only daughter, the actress and comedian Laura Smet, whose father was Johnny Hallyday.
“I lost half of my heart, she was the best mother in the world,” she wrote the day after the announcement of her death.
The actress died of Lewy body disease, a neurodegenerative condition that manifests as a combination of disorders similar to Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
Popular while being very discreet, Nathalie Baye was “an actress with whom we loved, dreamed, grew up,” praised President Emmanuel Macron.
“Women adored her” and “men respected her,” said producer Dominique Besnehard, once her agent.
For the former president of the Cannes festival Gilles Jacob, “from Truffaut to Godard, from Daniel Vigne to Spielberg, Nathalie was the typical French actress, the good friend. An actress loved by all, she played, she lived.
Eclectic
Born on July 6, 1948 in Mainneville (Eure), Nathalie Baye knew how to break her classic image to give free rein to her fantasy and offer herself an impressive filmography with around a hundred feature films. From François Truffaut (“American Night”…) to Xavier Dolan (“Just the End of the World”) via Bertrand Blier (“Our Story”), Tonie Marshall (“Venus Beauty”) and Claude Chabrol (“The Flower of Evil”).
She received multiple César awards (twice for a leading role, twice for a supporting role), notably winning the statuette three years in a row from 1981 to 1983, then again in 2006 for “The Little Lieutenant”.
The actress also made a little trip to Hollywood, playing Leonardo DiCaprio’s mother in Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can”.
In addition to rockstar Johnny Hallyday, Nathalie Baye shared the life of actor Philippe Léotard, Pierre Lescure and politician Jean-Louis Borloo, according to whom she “was anything but a celebrity woman”.
In her private life, “she did what she wanted to do,” her agent for 20 years, Elisabeth Tanner, told Paris-Match. “She never worried about what people said about her, about her choices, about her tastes. Above all, she was extremely discreet. Obviously, when she met Johnny, it was difficult to be discreet, but overall, she didn’t like the media coverage at all costs.
Nathalie Baye was a member of the Honorary Committee of the association for the right to die with dignity (ADMD), which campaigns for the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
