Actor Alain Delon, who died on Sunday at the age of 88, was France’s greatest screen actor.
To some he was the sexiest man of the 20th century, brilliantly portraying the roles of the pinpoint, icy killers made popular in the New Wave films of the 1960s.
To others, the man who often referred to himself in the third person and admitted to slapping a woman was an egotistical chauvinist, and feminists were stunned that the Cannes Film Festival gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
From France to Japan, where Delon was worshipped as an idol of male beauty, his millions of fans were willing to overlook his shortcomings.
The smell of sulphur and his angelic face proved an irresistible combination for a long line of glamorous actresses who became smitten with him.
On Delon’s 80th birthday, one of his oldest friends, 1960s icon Brigitte Bardot, described him in a note as “a two-headed eagle … the best and the worst.”
Delon’s rise to fame began in 1960, when he played handsome boy killers and mysterious conspirators in “Purple Noon” (later remade as “The Talented Mr. Ripley”) and Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard.”
He then established a reputation for playing the mysterious, cerebral hitman, one of Hollywood’s favorite characters, with his stunning portrayal of the silent assassin in Jean-Pierre Melville’s film “Le Samourai.”
All directors, from Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino to Hong Kong’s John Woo, are indebted to the inner life Delon gave to his stylish killer.
And then there were the affairs. Many ended in heartbreak and tragedy, including his long and tempestuous relationship with German actress Romy Schneider, with whom he starred in “The Swimming Pool.”
Delon, who repeatedly called her “the love of my life,” was found dead in her home at age 43, less than a year after her son died hanging from a railing in a freak accident. The official cause of death was a heart attack.
While living out his “great passion” with Schneider, Delon reportedly fathered a son with his compatriot, Velvet Underground singer Nico.
He always denied that the child was his, yet Delon’s mother raised the boy, Ari Bologne, who closely resembled Delon, and continued to insist that he was her son until her death from a heroin overdose in 2023 at the age of 60.
“I was programmed for success, not happiness. The two don’t go together,” said Delon, who claimed he has always defined himself through women.
“The eyes of my first wife, Nathalie, Romy, Mireille or the mother of my children inspired me to be who I am,” he said.
Yet two of her sons accused him of domestic violence, one of whom said Delon had broken eight of his mother’s ribs and her nose twice.
Delon denied this but admitted to slapping the women who attacked him.
His own childhood was troubled, with his mother sending him to a children’s home for a while.
As a teenage soldier he fought to keep Indochina French before being dishonourably discharged for theft.
Despite the mixed feelings he generated, film historian Jean-Michel Frodon stated that no other French male actor in the past half-century “had such a screen presence”.
French actor Vincent Lindon, who won the Best Actor award at Cannes in 2015, described Delon’s look as “hypnotic”.
“You can look at his photos for hours,” he told AFP.
But Delon never ventured to Hollywood, despite having a huge fan base in China and Japan, the latter of which boosted sales of his perfume brand.
His complicated personal life kept him in the headlines.
He didn’t just play villains, he associated with them. He was arrested in 1968 when his former bodyguard Stevan Markovic was found with a bullet wound in his neck.
Police suspected that Markovic was having an affair with Delon’s wife, Nathalie, and the case attracted national attention.
A Corsican gangster friend of Delon’s spent a year in prison for the murder before he was released, before the case was eventually left unsolved.
Delon retired from films altogether around 2000, appearing mostly on television thereafter, though he returned to the big screen in 2008 to play Julius Caesar in the Asterix film.
In later years, he became a polarizing figure because of his support for the far-right National Front, whose founder Jean-Marie Le Pen he called his “dear friend.”
He sparked controversy in 2016 by coming forward in defence of former minister Nadine Morano, who had declared France a “white country” that she did not want to see become Muslim.
“He has the guts to say that,” Delon said. “I have my respect for him. It doesn’t matter to me, I say what I think and I’ll continue to do that.”
He suffered a serious stroke in June 2019 and rarely left his estate in France’s central Loiret region after that.
As he grew weaker, his three children went into open war over his estate.
The three, Anthony, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, were the first to file a complaint, accusing their Japanese partner and former caregiver Hiromi Rollin of attempting to take advantage of their father.
They turn against each other when the case is dismissed in January 2024, with Anthony accusing his favorite child, Anouchka, of exploiting their “vulnerable” father.
Delon said he would complain against his son to the police through a lawyer.
FG/EAB-CB/GIV
This article is generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.
