Before she died last month, Renée French was a nurse at New York Presbyterian Columbia Hospital. At some point before that, she rendered an unforgettable performance in downtown indie film icon Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes as herself, or at least a version of herself with the same name, leafing through a gun magazine in a restaurant. She was poised and smoldering, gracefully insisting, to a persistently helpful waiter, that she be left alone to simply drink her coffee. “I really wish you hadn’t done that,” she says at one point, as he pours an unsolicited refill. “I had it the right color, the right temperature — it was just right.”

Coffee and Cigarettes was released in 2004, but French’s scene was shot some time during the preceding 18 years, during which Jarmusch filmed the movie’s 11 distinct stories. It’s not clear how much acting she subsequently did; IMDB lists just one other performance credit. Presumably, French might have found more work had her performance in Coffee been released sooner. (Jarmusch did try to do so, at one point reportedly nearing a deal to showcase the shorts on MTV before concerns about glorifying smoking scuttled things.)

After Jarmusch memorialized French on his Instagram, photographer Stephen Torton wrote about her recent life, saying in a comment, “Renee was a single mom and a front line nurse who died after months of near round the clock work.“ Another commenter wrote, “ She helped my mom when she was at her lowest during the peak of this pandemic. I’ll be forever grateful for her compassion and love for helping others.” French was a longtime New Yorker, and other friends remembered her working at and patronizing various downtown bars in the 1990s. “She cared about fellow humans,” one wrote. Jarmusch remembered her as “a truly rare and remarkable human being... kind, selfless, beautiful.”

It’s clear, in other social media posts, that French was grappling with the emotional toll of her work. At one point she wrote, as the pandemic waned, “I am struggling coming out of this ‘dream’.” Another time: “Just wanna have a few drinks and SLEEP.“

In the week and a half since I learned of French’s death, my thoughts have repeatedly returned to her. I saw Coffee for the first time maybe a month ago, part of a Jarmusch binge that began in March, as the city began its move indoors. In her work we see that peace is necessary for compassion, that providing solitude is as much an act of love as active care. I wish as a city and community we could have provided Renée with more of these things, and looking at what we together have gone through, and what many brave people have fought for, these last few days, I think they clearly are also needed by our most vulnerable citizens. Let people alone to live in peace, to care for others and to pursue happiness.