Alain Delon, known for his roles in classic films like Plein Soleil, Le Samoura, and Rocco and His Brothers, has passed away at the age of 88, according to his children.
“Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, and [his dog] Loubo are profoundly heartbroken to announce the demise of their father. “He died peacefully in his Douchy home, surrounded by his three children and family,” they said in a statement, adding that the family had requested privacy.
Delon is associated with the 1960s Renaissance of French film, having portrayed a succession of policemen, hitmen, and wonderfully chosen chancers for some of the country’s best directors, including Jean-Pierre Melville, René Clément, and Jacques Deray. He also collaborated with directors like Luchino Visconti, Louis Malle, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Jean-Luc Godard, but his attempts to break into Hollywood were unsuccessful.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, tweeted on X that Delon’s acting performances “made the world dream; he offered his unforgettable face to shake our lives.”.
“He wasn’t only a star. “He was a French monument,” Macron said.
Rachida Dati, the cultural minister, wrote, “We believe he was immortal…” His skill, charm, and aura positioned him for a Hollywood career at an early age, but he chose France.”
Born in 1935 in Sceaux, a suburb of Paris, Delon experienced school dismissals before leaving at the age of 14 to work in a butcher shop. After serving in the military, where he witnessed battle during France’s colonial war in Vietnam, he faced dishonorable dismissal in 1956 and embarked on his acting career. Hollywood producer David O Selznick saw him at Cannes and signed a contract, but he decided to try his luck in French film, making his debut with a minor role in Yves Allégret’s 1957 drama Send a Woman When the Devil Fails.
Delon’s extreme attractive looks had an instant impact, and he quickly advanced to starring parts. He played a soldier and a musician’s daughter who fell in love in the 1958 film Christine, alongside Romy Schneider. Delon and Schneider began a high-profile real-life romance away from the set, cementing Delon’s growing status as a sex symbol.
In 1960, he produced two films that had a big international impact: the Patricia Highsmith adaptation Plein Soleil (AKA Purple Noon) and Rocco and His Brothers. The former, a French-language rendition of The Talented Mr. Ripley, catapulted Delon to stardom, while Rocco, a narrative of a southern Italian peasant family relocating to the rich north, introduced him to Visconti, one of Europe’s leading auteurs. Antonioni, another Italian filmmaker, cast him as a smooth-talking stockbroker in his 1962 film L’Eclisse. Delon reconnected with Visconti in 1963 for The Leopard (also known as Il Gattopardo), a large-scale epic set in Risorgimento Sicily and based on the famed Lampedusa book.
Delon’s worldwide fame prompted him to make a serious attempt to break into English-language films, beginning with a modest appearance in Anthony Asquith’s anthology comedy The Yellow Rolls-Royce. Delon featured in Lost Command, about French paratroopers during WWII, Dean Martin’s western Texas Across the River, and Is Paris Burning?, another wartime epic starring Kirk Douglas. However, none were successful enough in Hollywood to establish Delon, so he returned to France.
In 1967, he played a raincoat-wearing hitman in the cult classic Le Samoura, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. The domestic success of the film spurred a series of crime films, such as The Sicilian Clan starring Jean Gabin, Deray’s Marseille-set Borsalino, and another Melville classic, The Red Circle. Delon also found time to perform in Girl on a Motorcycle, a film that features a leather-clad Faithfull riding a bike throughout Europe, and La Piscine, a film he co-starred in with his old sweetheart Schneider, which Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes recreated in 2016 as A Bigger Splash.
The “Markovic affair,” a massive public controversy that reached France’s highest levels after the discovery of Delon’s bodyguard Stefan Markovic dead in a waste dump in 1968, also coincided with La Piscine. Delon first accused François Marcantoni, a prominent underworld figure and close acquaintance, of the murder, but later withdrew the allegations. The discovery of compromising images purportedly featuring members of the French elite, including the wife of presidential contender Georges Pompidou, intensified the narrative. Despite the lack of proof, Delon’s close relationship with numerous unscrupulous individuals gained widespread recognition.
Delon continued to create pictures steadily throughout the 1970s, albeit with less influence than in prior decades. Monsieur Klein won the César for Best Picture in 1977, when Delon portrayed an art dealer during WWII whose identity is mistaken with that of a Jewish fugitive of the same name; in 1985, he won the César for Best Actor in Bertrand Blier’s surreal tale Notre Histoire. With his own business, Delon also ventured into film production, making his directorial debut in 1981 with Pour la Peau d’un Flic, as well as boxing promotion and furniture design.
Following his double role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague, Delon’s productivity declined in the 1990s. He proclaimed his retirement from acting in 1997 but returned in 2008 to play Julius Caesar in the French live-action film Asterix at the Olympic Games.
Delon’s personal life was problematic, with long relationships with Schneider, Mireille Darc (from whom he separated in 1982 after 15 years together), and Rosalie van Breemen, a Dutch model with whom he had two children before splitting up in 2002. He married Nathalie Delon from 1964 until 1968, and they had one child, Anthony, in 1964. In 1962, the singer and model Nico gave birth to a son, Christian; Delon disputed paternity, but Delon’s mother adopted the boy.
Former cultural minister Jack Lang commented on Delon’s compassion and their 20-year relationship. Lang described Delon as “an acting giant, prodigious, a prince of the cinema.”.
“He was extremely modest, reserved, restrained, and shy at the same time; even if he did express himself brutally from time to time, he did it with a flourish,” Lang told me.
Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France region, wrote on X: “Goodbye dear Alain,” while Éric Ciotti of Les Républicains wrote that Delon was a star apart: “France mourns a sacred giant who existed in the daily lives of French people across generations and will continue to thrill us for a long time to come.”
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