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Legendary actor Alain Delon dies at 88
One of the most famous faces of cinema passed away peacefully at his home in Douchy, surrounded by his family. The French actor was 88 years old.
Alain Delon, the star of the golden age of French cinema, died at 88. His children communicated this to AFP. “Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, and his dog Loubo have the immense pain of announcing their father’s passing. If you spent peacefully in his home in Douchy, with his children and family at his side,” reads the statement.
Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is one of the most important actors. Identified with French cinema’s revival in the 1960s, Delon played cops, hitmen, and beautifully chiselled chancers for some of the country’s greatest directors.
Born in 1935 in Sceaux in the Paris suburbs, Delon was expelled from several schools before leaving at 14 to work in a butcher’s shop. After a stint in the navy (during which he saw combat in France’s colonial war in Vietnam), he was dishonourably discharged in 1956 and drifted into acting. He was spotted by Hollywood producer David O Selznick at Cannes and signed a contract, but decided to try his luck in French cinema and made his debut with a small role in Yves AAllégret’s1957 thriller Send a Woman When the Devil Fails. Intense good looks made an immediate impact, and he swiftly graduated from leading roles. In 1958, he was cast opposite Romy Schneider in Christine as a soldier and mmusician’sdaughter who fell in love.
In 1960, he made two films that had a significant impact internationally: the Patricia Highsmith adaptation Plein Soleil (AKA Purple Noon) and Rocco and His Brothers. The former, a French-language version of The Talented Mr Ripley, turned Delon into a major star. At the same time, Rocco – a saga about a southern Italian peasant family moving to the prosperous north brought him into the orbit of Visconti, one of Europe’s foremost auteurs. Another Italian auteur, Antonioni, cast him as a smooth-talking stockbroker in 1962’s L’Eclisse. Delon reunited with Visconti in 1963 for The Leopard (aka Il Gattopardo), a large-scale epic set in Risorgimento, Sicily, adapted from the celebrated Lampedusa novel.
Alternating between auteur and commercial cinema throughout his career, Delon in his homeland was directed by directors such as Luchino Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, René Clément, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni and Jacques Deray, who brought out his cold gaze and cynical, in contrast with his angelic face, also making him the ideal interpreter of the noir antihero of many crime films. Delon, Rocco and His Brothers (1960), Plein Soleil (1960), L’Eclisse (1962), Il Gattopardo (1963), The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965), Lost Command (1966) and Le Samouraï (1967). He received critical acclaim in films.
General De Gaulle purchased the manuscripts and donated them to the Invalides Museum. Furthermore, the actress, passionate about animals, wrote an open letter to the President of China asking him not to mistreat animals at the request of Brigitte Bardot’s federation.
Delon began to slow his output in the 1990s after playing a double role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague. In 1997, he announced his retirement from acting, but he returned in 2008 to play Julius Caesar in the French live-action hit Asterix at the Olympic Games.
Delon had a complicated personal life, including extended 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 and from whom he separated in 2002. He married Nathalie Delon from 1964 to 1968; they had one child, Anthony, in 1964. In 1962, the singer and model Nico gave birth to a son, Christian; Delon denied paternity, but the child was adopted by Delon’s mother.
Goodbye to exaggerated beauty, endless charm, and a career of high-level roles. Thank you so much for everything…