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French actor Nadia Fares has died a week after being found unconscious in the swimming pool of a gym in Paris. She was 57.
The Morocco-born star had been in a coma since the incident, which reportedly occurred at a private club in the 9th arrondissement on 11 April.
Her daughters shared that Fares died on Friday (17 April).
“It is with immense sadness that we announce the passing of Nadia Fares this Friday,” their statement to AFP said.
“France has lost a great artist, but for us, it is above all a mother we have just lost.”
The sisters requested “respect and discretion” while they mourned their mother.
Fares rose to fame in 2000 with a breakthrough role in Les Rivières pourpres (The Crimson Rivers) by director Mathieu Kassovitz, based on the novel of the same name by Jean-Christophe Grangé.
She starred alongside Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel, whom Kassovitz had previously directed in La Haine. Fares then went on to appear in films including the 2007 US action thriller War with Jason Statham and Jet Li, and in the horror film Storm Warning.
In television, she starred as Vanessa d’Abrantes opposite Gerard Depardieu in Netflix’s first original French-language production, Marseille, across two seasons from 2016 to 2018, until its cancellation.
She had been due to begin shooting a new action-comedy, her first feature film as a screenwriter and director, in September.
Fares was open about the health issues she had faced in the past, revealing that she underwent brain surgery in 2007 due to an aneurysm that was “far from small”, and that she had three heart operations in four years.
In a separate post to her Instagram account, her daughter Cylia Chasman, an influencer who Fares shared with her husband, American film producer Steve Chasman, wrote a heartbroken tribute to her “best friend”.
“Mama. This is a heartbreak I will never get over,” she said. “Everyday I wake up and pray this is a nightmare and that you’re still with us. I know you fought your very hardest for your babies. Thank you. Thank you for fighting, thank you for giving me life, thank you for every memory, thank you for the laughs, for the cries.
“On Saturday we were on the phone and you told me you weren’t afraid of death, and my response was that I was afraid of your death, and the next day the universe decided it was time for you. As much as it pains me it brings me some comfort knowing you weren’t afraid. I know you tried your best to stay, I sat at the edge of your bed and begged and pleaded for you to stay and the universe took you anyway.”
She continued: “It pains me to say goodbye but mama I will make you so proud. I am so happy that we got even closer than we were before in your last few months. You understood me better than anyone and I don’t know how I will recover. People always say I’m mini you and that’s the best compliment.”
Chasman called her mother her “best friend” and a “role model” with whom she was always excited to share her achievements.
“Rest so peacefully maman. Be my angel forever. I need it,” she wrote.
Le Parisien reports that Fares’ daughter Shana wrote in part on an Instagram story: “I love you maman, I’ll write my words when I’m ready. Please give me time.”
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