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French actor Alain Delon, who played the villain and the policeman and made hearts beat around the world, has died at the age of 88, French media reported.
With his handsome looks and gentle manner, the distinguished actor managed to combine strength with a charming, vulnerable quality that made him one of the most prominent French actors.
Dillon was also a producer, appearing in plays and, in later years, in television films.
His sons announced his death on Sunday in a statement to the French national news agency, a common practice in France. Tributes to Delon quickly began pouring in on social media, and all of France’s leading media outlets switched to full coverage of his prolific career.
At the height of his career, in the 1960s and 1970s, Delon was in demand by some of the world's top directors, from Luchino Visconti to Joseph Losi.
In his later years, Delon became disillusioned with the film industry, saying that money killed the dream. In a 2003 edition of the weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, he wrote: “Money, commerce and television have destroyed the dream machine. Cinema is dead for me. And me too.”
But he continued to work frequently, appearing in several television films into his seventies.
Delon's presence was unforgettable, whether he was playing morally perverted heroes or romantic leads. He first gained public acclaim in 1960 with René Clément's “Plein Soleil,” in which he played a killer trying to impersonate his victims.
He directed several Italian films, working notably with Visconti on Rocco and His Brothers (1961), in which Delon plays a self-sacrificing brother determined to help his brother. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Visconti's 1963 film Le Guepard (The Leopard), starring Delon, won the Palme d'Or, the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival. His other films include Clement's Is Paris Burning, with a screenplay by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola, among others; Jacques Deray's La Piscine (The Sinners); and another film by Lozzi, The Assassination of Trotsky, in 1972.
In 1968, Delon began making films—26 of them by 1990—as part of the frenetic, self-confident momentum he maintained throughout his life.
Delon's confidence was evident in his 1996 statement to Femme magazine, “I like to be loved the way I love myself!”, which reflected his charismatic on-screen persona.
Delon continued to dazzle audiences for years – and at the same time was criticized for comments deemed outdated. In 2010 he appeared in Un mari de trop and returned to the stage in 2011 with An Ordinary Day alongside his daughter Anoushka.
He briefly chaired the Miss France jury, but resigned in 2013 after a row over controversial statements, including criticism of women, gay rights and immigrants. Despite these controversies, he was awarded the Palme d'Honneur at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, a decision that sparked further controversy.
Born on November 8, 1935, in Sceaux, just south of Paris, Delon was placed with a foster family after his parents separated when he was four years old. He then attended a Roman Catholic boarding school.
At the age of seventeen, Delon joined the Navy and was sent to Indochina. In 1956, he returned to France, and held a variety of odd jobs, from waiter to porter at a Paris meat market, before turning to acting.
Delon had a son, Anthony, in 1964, with his then-wife Nathalie Canovas, who starred alongside him in Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 film Samurai. He had two more children, Anouchka and Alain Fabien, with a later partner, Rosalie van Breemen, with whom he produced a song and video in 1987. He was also widely believed to be the father of Ary Boulogne, the son of German model and singer Nico, although he has never publicly acknowledged paternity.
“I'm very good at three things: my work, my foolishness, and my children,” he said in a 1995 interview with L'Express.
Delon pursued a variety of activities throughout his life, from establishing a stable for trotting horses to developing fragrances for men and women, to watches, eyewear and other accessories. He also collected paintings and sculptures.
Delon announced the end of his acting career in 1999, but continued to do so, appearing in Bertrand Blier's Les Acteurs the same year. He later appeared in several police television shows. In 2022, in his last film before retiring, he co-starred in Patrice Leconte's The Empty House with Juliette Binoche.
It was his good looks that sustained him. In August 2002, Delon told the weekly magazine, L'Humanité Hebdo, that he would not have stayed in the job without his good looks.
“You will never see me old and ugly,” he said as he approached seventy, “because I will be gone before then, or I will die.”
But in 2019, Delon expressed his feelings about the meaning of his life during a tribute at the Cannes Film Festival. “The one thing I’m sure of is that if there’s one thing I’m truly proud of, it’s my career,” he said.
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