Bulgarian-born French actress Natalia Dontcheva, known to television audiences across France for her roles in Doc Martin and Joséphine Ange Gardien, died on Saturday, 1 August 2026, at the age of 56.

Her death was confirmed by her stepson, the film producer Hugo Sélignac, who published an open letter on his Instagram account paying tribute to her. "Après un combat de dix ans, tu pars enfin te reposer," he wrote — "After a ten-year battle, you finally go to rest." No cause of death was disclosed, but Sélignac's reference to a decade-long struggle made clear that illness had been part of her life for some time.

Dontcheva's agent, Laurent Savry, separately announced her passing to the French newspaper Le Figaro, which reported the news on 2 August.

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1969, Dontcheva built a career that bridged French television and international film. She is perhaps most widely recognised for her role in the French adaptation of Doc Martin — a comedy-drama about a gruff small-town doctor that originally aired on TF1 — where she starred for four years between 2011 and 2015. She was also a familiar face on Joséphine Ange Gardien, a long-running feel-good series on TF1 about a celestial guardian who helps people through life's difficulties.

Her work extended well beyond those two series. In 2019, she earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Quebec Cinema Awards for her performance in the film Sashinka. Her screen credits also included the 2003 film Mauvais esprit, directed by Patrick Alessandrin, and her most recent role was in the French drama Disturbing Disappearances.

Sélignac — son of director Arnaud Selignac and a producer whose own credits include the French films Bac Nord and L'Amour ouf — wrote his tribute in the form of a direct address to his stepmother. "J'aimais profondément qui tu étais," he told her: "I loved deeply who you were." He also thanked her for taking care of his father for 25 years, and wrote: "Notre socle, c'était toi" — "You were our foundation."

For French television viewers, Dontcheva was a steady presence across more than two decades of programming — the kind of actress who turned up in living rooms week after week, across genres from light comedy to drama. Her death leaves those roles as a record of a working career that moved between countries, languages and formats, from Bulgarian roots to French prime time.