The French leading actor, Alain Delon, who played in some of the best European films of the period between the years 1960 and 1970, was a dark and handsome guy. He died away. He was 88.
“With great sadness, Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, and (his dog) Loubo announce the demise of their father. He died quietly in his Douchy home, accompanied by his three children as well as his immediate family, according to a family statement provided to the AFP news agency. Alain Delon had been in terrible health in recent years, including a stroke in 2019.
With a resume that included films such as The Leopard (1963) and Rocco and His Brothers (1960) by Luchino Visconti, Purple Noon (1960) by René Clément, The Eclipse of Venus (1962) by Michelangelo Antonioni, Mr. Klein (1976) by Joseph Losey, and Le Samouraï (1967) and The Red Circle (1970) by Jean-Pierre Melville, Delon starred in a number of art house motion pictures that have since become classics.
His taut and austere performances, which frequently portrayed seductive men experiencing conflict within themselves, were characterized by underlying malaise typical of postwar French and Italian films as well as violent outbursts. He was often referred to as “the male Brigitte Bardot” a lot.
Delon never made it big in Hollywood, despite being a matinee idol in Europe. After arriving there in 1964, he had deals with MGM and Columbia, producing a total of six animated films. But after failing to make a name for himself, he left in 1967 and quickly went on to appear in two successful crime films in France: Borsalino (1970) and The Sicilian Clan (1969).
Despite having produced several dozen of the around 100 pictures he acted in, Delon was not awarded much during his lifetime. For Bertrand Blier’s 1984 romantic Our Story, in which he portrayed an alcoholic who falls in love with a younger woman (Nathalie Baye), he was the only recipient of a French César. He received an honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019 and a honorable Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 1995.
Over 25,000 people signed a petition denouncing his “racism, homophobia, and misogyny,” which created controversy surrounding the latter prize. Although Alain Delon did not support “adoption by two people of the identical sex,” he did not object to homosexual marriage, he told Reuters, adding that he had “never harassed a woman in the course of my life.” But they really bothered me a lot.
During his Cannes ceremony, the tearful-eyed actor told the crowd, “You don’t have to agree with me.” “However, when there’s anything in the globe that I can be sure of and truly proud of, it’s my career.”
On November 8, 1935, Alain Delon was born in the southern Parisian district of Sceaux. His mother Édith worked at a pharmacy, while his father Fabien owned a neighborhood movie theater. Following his parents’ divorce in 1939, he was placed in foster care before attending a Catholic boarding institution. After earning a vocational degree, he briefly worked in the Paris suburb of Bourg-la-Reine at the butcher shop owned by his stepfather.
Alain Delon joined the French navy after being called up for military duty at the age of 17. After receiving criticism for pilfering equipment, he was dispatched to Saigon to fight in the First Indochina War, but he was later let go due to his theft and vehicle crash.
In 1956, Alain Delon returned to Paris, taking odd jobs and going to the cafés and clubs in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It was there that he met Jean-Claude Brialy, who had acted in early New Wave films like Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge. When Brialy brought Delon to Cannes that year, David O. Selznick noticed his angelic appearance. Delon went to Rome for a screen test with the producer of Gone With the Wind, who proposed a seven-year deal on the condition that he work on his English.
At the insistence of director Yves Allégret, who cast Alain Delon in his first feature film, the 1957 retribution drama Send a Woman When the Devil Fails, Alain Delon instead decided to stay in France. (Actress Michèle Cordoue, who was Allégret’s wife, suggested Delon for the role; at the time, he was her lover.)
Years later, speaking to Vanity Fair about his first-ever encounter in front of the camera at the age of 22, he said, “I didn’t know how to do anything.” “After giving me a quick look, Yves Allégret remarked, ‘Alain, pay close attention to what I’m saying. Talk like you speak to me. As if you were staring at me. As you listen to me, listen too. Live, don’t act. That caused a complete transformation.
After that, Alain Delon worked consistently. During his career, he shared the screen on eight occasions with Jean-Paul Belmondo, who played a teenage thug in the French criminal comedy Be Attractive and Shut Up, in which he was cast as the lead character.
The Eclipse, a modernist existential romance starring Antonioni and Monica Vitti, Any Number Can Win (1963), a sorrowful heist film directed by Henri Verneuil in which the actor played a young, ambitious gangster opposite of French legend Jean Gabin, and Visconti’s epic Sicilian masterpiece The Leopard, starring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale, were among the other highlights of the 1960s. That brought Delon his only Golden Globe nomination and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1963.
Alain Delon was romantically associated with Nico, the singer of The Velvet Underground, after he and Schneider became engaged in 1959. Christian Aaron Boulogne, born in 1962, was subsequently adopted by the actor’s parents, despite Delon’s denials of fatherhood.
He wed the actress Francine Canovas in 1964, the year she played Nathalie Delon in Le Samouraï and changed her name to Anthony.
In 1968, Alain Delon started a lengthy relationship with actress Mireille Darc, who acted in the Borsalino films. Additionally, he began dating Dutch model Rosalie van Breeman in 1987. Anouchka and Alain-Fabien are the couple’s two children.
His three children had recently fought over his financial situation and medical regimen, and in February 2024, police discovered more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition and 72 firearms at his Douchy-Montcorbon residence, which is located south of Paris. He lacked a permission for any of the weaponry.
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