When I was a kid, my parents decided that they wanted to hire someone to help my mother with my siblings and me. They looked through the paper (not sure which, probably the Times) and saw a classified ad from a young woman looking for work. She was French, maybe 17, and had come to New York to study dance. My mom and dad hired her, and the woman would become our au pair for the next year.

Eventually, she returned to France. And though she gave up dance, Nathalie Baye has become one of that country’s most accomplished and iconic actresses. (Americans who aren’t into French cinema may know her as Leo DiCaprio’s mom in “Catch Me If You Can.”)

Nathalie’s still a family friend. My mother sees her fairly frequently, and I got the chance to visit with her in New York a couple years ago, when she was in town for a film screening at the Alliance Francaise. And a year or so before that, when I was visiting Paris a lot, I spent some time with Nathalie there. She’s a beautiful, charming and soulful woman, and it’s fun to hear her talk about what I was like at age four.

Occasionally I get the chance to read about Nathalie in the press, as in today’s NYT’s article about France’s changing sexual mores.

The posters were advertising “Cliente,” a popular movie that revolves around clichés about prostitution and gigolos in France. Judith, the client, who is played by Nathalie Baye, one of France’s highest-paid actresses, is not a pathetic, lifted rich woman of a certain age and nothing to do. Rather, she is a hard-charging, 51-year-old television shopping-channel anchor and director who, after her marriage falls apart, wants good sex without strings and is willing to pay handsomely for it.

Strange, a bit, to have your nanny playing a sexually liberated woman paying for sex. But not really, except that it says something about the never-ending process of growing up. I love watching Nathalie as she pushes limits in ways that few American actresses get the chance to. And isn’t this a wonderful thing about life—the way that our ability to appreciate people becomes more expansive as we grow older?