“I lost half of my heart”: Laura Smet’s heartbreaking tribute to Nathalie Baye, “the best mother in the world”

Laura Smet comes out of the silence. Nathalie Baye, discreet but popular figure on the French screen and ex-partner of Johnny Hallyday, died from a neurodegenerative disease on Saturday April 18. Silent since the announcement of her mother’s death, Laura Smet spoke for the first time this Sunday, April 19 via an Instagram publication.

In the photograph, we see him still very young in the arms of Nathalie Baye. A cliché to which the actress attached a touching description. “Mom, I lost half of my heart. She was the best mother in the world, I am sending you these few words without really believing in them yet”, can we read. “I wanted to thank you for all your testimonies and your words which touch me enormously,” she wrote before concluding: “I love it so much. Take care of yourself and especially your loved ones, it’s so precious.”
The publication sparked numerous reactions, accumulating hundreds of comments in one hour. Among which, that of the actor Guillaume Canet: “My heart goes out to you Laura”. The comedian Jamel Debbouze, Paul Belmondo, the only son of Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Laurent Delahousse, the presenter of the France 2 news, also reacted.

When her death was announced on Saturday April 18, many personalities had already spoken out to pay tribute to her. Sandrine Kiberlain had published a photo of the actress on Instagram accompanied by these words: “Your voice. This timbre which marked my adolescence and my life. And your humor… your good taste for singularity”. On the same platform, Richard Berry, his gaming partner in La Baule-les-Pins (1990), said: “Nathalie, you take with you our laughter and the tender memories of our beginnings. Great sadness”.

“I don’t see the point in prolonging the suffering”

Nathalie Baye suffered from Lewy body disease, a pathology similar to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. It had been several months since she had appeared in public.

Lewy body disease mainly results in cognitive disorders. It is accompanied by development of dementia, a bit like in the case of Alzheimer’s, explains the Brain Research Foundation. But it also presents motor difficulties, as with Parkinson’s disease.

Died at the age of 77, Nathalie Baye made the headlines in 2023l’Obs consecrate it a forum of 109 personalities calling on President Emmanuel Macron to change the law on the end of life, still debated in Parliament. “Every year, French people suffering from serious and incurable illnesses are confronted with physical and moral suffering that treatments are no longer able to relieve,” the signatories wrote in particular.

“I don’t see the point in prolonging the suffering […]. Life belongs to us. Death too. And if one day I am in this state myself, I would like, in the same way, for the comedy of life to be stopped. No more.”, she said in an interview published by Obs on the occasion of this forum, in March 2023.