Overview
- Her family told AFP on Saturday that she died Friday evening at her Paris home from complications of Lewy body dementia.
- Lewy body dementia is a progressive brain disease that can cause memory problems, movement issues and vivid hallucinations.
- Over five decades she appeared in more than 80 films, won four Césars and worked with auteurs including François Truffaut, Jean‑Luc Godard, Maurice Pialat and Claude Chabrol.
- International audiences knew her for Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can and for playing Madame de Montmirail in Downton Abbey: A New Era, with a notable turn on Call My Agent alongside her daughter.
- President Emmanuel Macron and Culture Minister Catherine Pégard led tributes to a national icon, as colleagues and fans honored a private figure who supported climate action and end‑of‑life law reform and is survived by her daughter, actress Laura Smet.