actress Nadia Farès died at 57

They never forget, The Purple Rivers, The Demons of Jesus, Marseille…actress Nadia Farès died after her swimming pool accident on Saturday April 12 in Paris.

“It is with immense sadness that we announce the death this Friday of Nadia Farès. France has lost a great artist, but for us, it is above all a mother that we have just lost,” wrote her daughters Cylia and Shana Chasman.

The 57-year-old actress was found unconscious at the bottom of the swimming pool at the Blanche sports club, a high-end facility located in the 9th arrondissement of the capital.

According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, she “had been brought to the surface, unconscious, after having been observed by several people in a yoga position at the bottom of the water”. She would have remained underwater “between three and four minutes”, according to witnesses on site. Transported in absolute emergency to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital (13th), she was resuscitated before being placed in an artificial coma, in an extremely serious state of health, had announced The Parisian. An investigation into the causes of the injuries had been opened and the preferred hypothesis was that of heart failure, even though she had had several heart operations in the past.

Of the Purple Rivers has Marseille

Nadia Farès was the mother of two daughters, Shana, 23, and Cylia, 20. Born in Marrakech (Morocco) in 1968, she grew up in Nice before moving to Paris to try an artistic career. She took her first steps in the cinema in the thriller They never forget by Christopher Frank in 1994 before playing for renowned directors like Alexandre Arcady, Claude Lelouch and Bernie Bonvoisin.

She established herself in the eyes of the general public in 2000 thanks to her role in The purple rivers by Mathieu Kassovitz, filmed in Isère, alongside Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel.

This role opened her international doors and she continued her career in Anglo-Saxon action films while playing in French comedies. From 2009, she put her career on hold to take care of her daughters in Los Angeles, born from her marriage to Steven Chasman, an American film producer, from whom she has separated since 2022.

“Those who know me well know that I have always followed my heart. To the detriment of a career, certainly. I obviously missed films, but that’s how I am,” she said at the start of the year in an interview with Gala. “Even the pride of making certain films does not equal the feeling of love. By following my husband to Los Angeles, I really needed to build a family of my own, to devote all my time to it.”

She returned in 2016, for the series Marseillebroadcast on Netflix, in which she played the role of Vanessa d’Abrantes, president of the Bouches-du-Rhône departmental council, alongside Gérard Depardieu and Benoit Magimel.

She then starred in the mini-series Red Shadows in 2019, rebroadcast last summer on TF1, and in the series Lutherstill on TF1.

Next September, she was to begin filming her first feature film as screenwriter and director, in Paris.