Nadia Farès Dies at 57, French Film Star Found Unconscious in Paris Pool

Nadia Farès, the French-Moroccan actress remembered for Les Rivières pourpres, Marseille and Luther, died on Friday at 57 after being found unconscious in a swimming pool in Paris a week earlier.

French reports said Farès was discovered on April 11 at a private sports club in the 9th arrondissement, near Rue Blanche. She was taken to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital and placed in an artificial coma. Authorities opened an investigation into the incident, and no wrongdoing had been identified at that stage.

Her daughters, Cylia and Shana Chasman, confirmed her death to AFP and asked for privacy as they mourned their mother. “France has lost a great artist, but for us, it is above all a mother we have just lost,” they said.

Born on December 20, 1968, in Marrakech, Morocco, Farès became known to French audiences through a career that moved between film and television. Her best-known screen role was in the 2000 thriller Les Rivières pourpres, a film that helped define her place in French cinema and introduced her to international viewers as well. She later reached a broader audience through Marseille and Luther, works that kept her visible to both domestic and international television fans.

The news of her death has sharpened attention on a career that crossed national and cultural lines. Described in several reports as French-Moroccan, Farès represented a generation of performers who brought greater visibility to North African talent in French film and television. Her work in a major thriller, a political drama and a British crime series gave her a range that made her recognizable far beyond one role or one market.

Farès’s death closes a career that left a clear mark on French screen culture. For viewers who followed her from Les Rivières pourpres to later television work, she remained a familiar face with a distinctive screen presence. For her family, the loss is far more immediate: a mother first, and an artist whose name will remain tied to some of the most recognizable French productions of the past quarter-century.