Nathalie Baye: The Terrible Words of Her Parents Jealous of Her Success, When I Think About It I Want to Cry

Nathalie Baye has often played roles of high society ladies in her acting career. This image has stuck with her for a long time, even though it’s far from her own background. Born in Mainneville, Eure, she comes from a family of artists, more bohemian than bourgeois. Her parents, both painters, raised her in various places like Brittany, Paris, and Menton, an upbringing quite different from the one she later chose for her daughter, Laura. “A child needs to have limits, values, a framework,” she said in an interview with the Belgian daily Le Soir. Her parents, as she likes to point out in different interviews, didn’t restrict anything.

This lack of boundaries led her to pursue dance, seeking discipline and rigor, as she mentioned to Gala in 2009. “I worked a lot. It was a tough discipline, but it shaped me. Dance can break you because there’s rarely any feedback possible. You get criticized a lot, even in public,” she said. She later added, “It’s a very tough environment where you’re constantly faced with your limitations…if you fail, everyone sees it, and you see yourself failing in the mirror.”

In the Belgian show Hep Taxi hosted by Jérôme Colin, Baye discussed her painter parents who never achieved success, living a financially difficult life. She acknowledged the pain in their freedom as artists without recognition and how her success might have hurt them. Despite their lack of warm congratulations at the beginning of her career, Baye doesn’t hold any grudges and feels like crying when she thinks about it.

As she navigated her career, Baye had to endure her parents’ bitterness. Her mother once implied that her success in cinema was due to questionable means, while her father considered her “not bad” in a film after twenty years in the industry. Although their lack of pride was painful, Baye holds no resentment towards them.

Laura, Baye’s daughter, was raised in the opposite manner to her own childhood. When Laura decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps, Baye, despite her initial anxiety, was amazed by her daughter’s talent in dramatic art. Proud of her daughter, Baye reflected on her own parenting choices and the contrast between her upbringing and Laura’s choice to enter the same profession.