Legendary French movie actor Alain Delon has died at the age of 88. He was arguably the greatest star of French cinema, appearing from the 1960s as tough guy characters in films such as The Leopard, Rocco and his Brothers, Le Samourai and Borsalino. He had become reclusive in recent years and a family breakdown as he battled poor health had made international headlines.
Alain Delon was born in Paris in 1935, the only child of cinema manager Fabien Delon and his wife Edith, who divorced when he was four. In a 2015 documentary, he remembered the ‘tears of my childhood’. ‘Loneliness is part of my life,’ he said. ‘I live well with it. I need it.’
When both his foster mother and father died, his parents sent him to Catholic boarding schools, where he was expelled six times because of his disruptive behaviour.
Alain Delon appeared in almost 90 movies, the last in the 1990s. He was described as ‘the most beautiful man in the movies’, and was said to have had affairs with many of his female co-stars, including Jane Fonda while they were filming the 1964 movie Joy House, Swedish-American actress and singer Ann-Margret, and Bond girl Lana Wood, younger sister of Natalie Wood.
Alain Delon’s death, at the age of 88, was announced yesterday morning in a statement from the actor’s children – Alain-Fabien, Anouchka and Anthony Delon.
‘He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy. His family asks you to please respect his privacy, in this extremely painful moment of mourning,’ they wrote.
Tributes
Movie star Brigitte Bardot led tributes in France, saying that Alain Delon’s “represented the best of France’s ‘prestige cinema'” and that his death left a “huge void that nothing and no-one will be able to fill”.
French president Emmanuel Macron also paid tribute to Delon, calling him not just a legendary actor but a ‘monument’.
Le Parisian newspaper called Delon “a legend of the cinema”, while Liberation described him as “a leading figure of cinema, symbol of shadowy masculinity, the actor with crazy charisma”.
Alain Delon’s last major public appearance was to receive an honorary Palme d’or at the Cannes film festival in May 2019. He made an emotional speech in which he appeared to bid farewell to cinema.
Gossip magazines had continued to follow his affairs and his personal life, and he faced criticism for his support for far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, his supposedly misogynistic relationships with women, and his relationships with his family, who had been involved in lawsuits, accusation and secret recordings regarding his care.
In April this year, a judge had placed Delon under “reinforced curatorship”, meaning he no longer had full freedom to manage his assets, and he had also made headlines in February of this year when French police seized 72 unlicensed firearms and 3,000 rounds of ammunition from his home in Douchy-Montcorbon. It is there that he asked to be buried, near the graves of the 50 or so pet dogs he doted on over the years.
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