Downton Abbey actress Nathalie Baye has died

Sad news

Baye was huge in the French film scene, and was a four-time winner at the French version of the Oscars, the Césars.

She also starred in English-language films, including Catch Me If You Can and Downton Abbey: A New Era.

Baye was reportedly diagnosed with Lewy body dementia last summer, which is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that can cause hallucinations and impact cognitive thinking and movements, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Baye won Best Supporting Actress at the Césars twice - once in 1981 for Every Man for Himself and again in 1982 for Strange Affair.

She then went on to win Best Actress in 1983 for La Balance, and again in 2006 for The Young Lieutenant.

“I try to do things which I would like to go and see at the cinema,” Baye once said of her work.

“My starting point isn’t my character, but the project as a whole. A film is an adventure, a script, a director, casting, a variety of things.”

French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the late star.

“We loved Nathalie Baye so much.

“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.”