Versatile French actor best known for her film roles in Catch Me If You Can, Every Man for Himself and Downton Abbey
In a prolific and versatile career of nearly 100 films, the French actor Nathalie Baye, who has died aged 77, was recognised for her ability to adapt to any part she chose to play. Her many and varied roles included an alcoholic police officer, a prostitute, a beautician, wrestler, supermarket cashier, telephone operator and, more recently, a marchioness in the second Downton Abbey film, as well as a cameo role in the hit French television series Dix pour Cent.
Discovered in the 1970s by the New Wave director François Truffaut, then cast by Jean-Luc Godard and, later, Steven Spielberg in his 2002 film Catch Me If You Can (starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks), Baye worked with some of cinema’s most recognised and respected figures.
It was not just the quantity of her roles but the quality of her performances that earned her accolades. Baye won four César awards, the French equivalent of an Oscar, two of them for best actress. Three of them, for Every Man for Himself (1980), Strange Affair (1981) and La Balance (1982), were won in successive years.
Her big break came when Truffaut cast her first in his 1973 comedy La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night), then five years later as the lead role opposite himself in the historical drama La Chambre Verte (The Green Room, 1978) based on Henry James’s short story The Altar of the Dead, first published in his collection Terminations in 1895.
