The global film community is in mourning following the death of Nadia Farès, the celebrated French-Moroccan actress best known for her role in the thriller The Crimson Rivers. Farès passed away on Friday evening, April 17, 2026, at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Her death comes exactly one week after a Nadia Farès swimming pool accident left her in a critical condition and an induced coma.
On April 11, Farès was discovered unconscious at the bottom of a swimming pool at a private sports club on Rue Blanche in Paris’s 9th arrondissement. According to witnesses and the Paris prosecutor’s office, the actress appeared to be in a yoga-like position underwater before being pulled to the surface by a fellow swimmer. Despite immediate CPR and intensive care, her daughters, Cylia and Shana Chasman, confirmed that she ultimately succumbed to complications following a “cardiac incident.”
While the investigation into her death remains open, authorities have noted that no criminal activity is suspected. Farès had been candid about her health struggles in recent years, describing her condition in a January 2026 interview as a “ticking time bomb.” She had previously survived a major brain surgery for an aneurysm in 2007, followed by three heart operations within a four-year period. Despite these hurdles, she remained an avid swimmer, typically visiting the pool four times a week to maintain her fitness and vitality.
Farès rose to international prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, starring in hits like The Nest and the Netflix series Marseille. At the time of the Nadia Farès swimming pool accident, she was preparing for a major career transition. She was scheduled to begin filming her directorial debut an action-comedy with Studios TF1 this coming September. “France has lost a great artist,” her daughters stated, “but for us, it is above all a mother that we have just lost.”
