A very sad day for cinema fans... Actress Nadia Farès has died on Friday, April 17, 2026, at the age of 57, her daughters Cylia and Shana Chasman announced to the AFP. Hospitalized at the Pitié-Salpêtrière after being found unconscious on April 12 in a pool on Rue Blanche in Paris, she had been placed in an artificial coma. An investigation has been opened into the incident, with no wrongdoing identified at this stage.
Born in December 1968 in Marrakech, to a Moroccan father and an Armenian mother, Nadia Farès grew up in Nice before moving to Paris to pursue acting. Her screen debut came in the early 1990s, first on television with Navarro, then in cinema in Christopher Frank’s Elles n’oublient jamais. She went on to appear in several French films, including Hommes, femmes : mode d’emploi by Claude Lelouch, before gaining wider recognition toward the end of the decade.
Her career is mainly associated with a handful of standout roles, including Les Démons de Jésus by Bernie Bonvoisin, Les Rivières pourpres by Mathieu Kassovitz in 2000, and then Nid de guêpes by Florent-Emilio Siri in 2002. After this period of visibility, Nadia Farès deliberately put her career on hold to focus on family life following her move to Los Angeles with American producer Steve Chasman, with whom she had two daughters, born in 2002 and 2005. She truly returned to screens only in 2016 with the series Marseille, before lining up several TV dramas such as Les Ombres rouges, La Promesse and Luther, as well as the film On the Line in 2022.
In recent months, the actress had been discussing new projects, including her first feature film, which she was developing as both writer and director. In an interview given in January 2026, she also revealed she had faced serious health challenges, including brain surgery in 2007 for an aneurysm and three heart operations within four years. Her death marks the end of a career that she built across cinema, television, and personal choices she stood by, all while maintaining a steady presence in France’s audiovisual landscape.
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