French actress Nathalie Baye poses as she arrives for the screening of the film "The Dead Don't Die" during the 72nd edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 14, 2019. LOIC VENANCE / AFP
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 Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Saturday, April 18. Baye, a stalwart of French cinema, starred in some 80 films and took home the Best Actress Cesar 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. 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. She also worked with Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan, who cast her as one of his many difficult mothers in Laurence Anyways and Juste la fin du monde (It's Only the End of the World). 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.
