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Alain Delon, the internationally renowned French film star who charmed the world with his roles as villains and policemen, has died at the age of 88, according to French media reports.
Handsome in appearance and gentle in manner, this prolific actor combines toughness with a charming, vulnerable quality that makes him one of France’s unforgettable leading men.
Delon was also a producer, appearing in plays and later in television films.
His death was announced by his children in a statement to the French state news agency AFP on Sunday, a common practice in France. Tributes to Delon immediately poured in on social media platforms, and all major French media outlets began covering his prolific career in full.
The 1960s and 1970s were the peak of Delon’s career, and he was favored by some of the world’s top directors, such as Luchino Visconti and Joseph Losey.
In his later years, Delon became disillusioned with the film industry, saying that money had killed his dreams. “Money, commerce and television have destroyed the dream machine,” he wrote in the newsweekly Le Nouvel Observateur in 2003. “My cinema is dead. And I am dead too.”
But he continued to work frequently and appeared in several TV movies well into his 70s.
Delon gave memorable performances, whether playing a morally corrupt hero or a romantic leading man, and he first won acclaim in 1960 with Réne Clément’s Plein Soleil, in which he played a murderer who attempts to assume the identity of his victim.
He made several Italian films, most notably Rocco and His Brothers (1961), with Visconti, in which Delon played a selfless brother who wanted to help his brothers. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Delon won the Cannes Film Festival’s highest honor, the Palme d’Or, for his role in Visconti’s The Leopard in 1963. His other films include Clement’s Is Paris Burning, written by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola, among others; The Sinner, directed by Jacques Deray; and Losey’s The Assassination of Trotsky in 1972.
Delon began making films in 1968 and by 1990 had made 26, part of a frenetic and confident momentum that he maintained throughout his life.
In 1996, Delon told Femme magazine: “I like to be loved the way I love myself!” This statement fully reflects his charming screen image.
Delon has charmed audiences over the years, but has also attracted criticism for his outdated reviews. In 2010, he starred in “Un mari de trop” (“One Husband Too Many”), and in 2011 he returned to the stage with “An Ordinary Day,” starring with his daughter Anoushka.
He briefly served as president of the Miss France jury but resigned in 2013 following some controversial statements, including criticism of women, LGBTQIA+ rights, and immigration. Despite these controversies, he was awarded the Honorary Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, a decision that sparked further debate.
Delon was born on November 8, 1935 in Sceaux, south of Paris. His parents divorced when he was four years old and he was placed in a foster family. He then attended a Roman Catholic boarding school.
At 17, Delon joined the navy and was posted to Indochina. After returning to France in 1956, he worked various odd jobs, from waiter to porter at a Paris meat market, before pursuing an acting career.
In 1964, Delon had a son, Anthony, with his then-wife Nathalie Canovas, with whom he starred in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 film Les chambres d’hôtes. He later had two more children, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, with his partner Rosalie van Breemen, with whom he produced a song and video clip in 1987. He is widely believed to be the father of Ari Boulogne, son of German model and singer Nico, although he has never publicly acknowledged paternity.
In a 1995 interview with the Express, he said: “There are three things I’m best at: my job, stupid things and my kids.”
Delong was involved in many activities throughout his life, from building stables to developing men’s and women’s colognes to watches, glasses and other accessories. He also collected paintings and sculptures.
In 1999, Delon announced that he was ending his acting career, but continued to act, starring in Bertrand Blier’s Les Acteurs that same year. He later appeared in several television police dramas. In 2022, in his last film before retirement, he co-starred with Juliette Binoche in Patrice Leconte’s The Empty House.
His good looks supported him. In August 2002, Delon told the weekly magazine Humane Weekly that if it were not for this, he would not be working in this industry now.
“You’ll never see me get old or ugly,” he said, now in his late 60s, “because I’ll either be gone or I’ll die.”
However, it wasn’t until 2019 that Delon expressed his feelings about the meaning of life during an awards ceremony at the Cannes Film Festival. “One thing I know for sure is that if there is anything I can be proud of, really, the only thing I can be proud of is my career.”
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