He was once called the most handsome man in cinema. But that time has long passed: now the 88-year-old actor is old, sick and living the life of a recluse.
The last tragedy with Delon in the main role was the breakup of his family, writes the BBC.
However, it is played out not on screens, but in the mass media, in front of a shocked audience whose emotions range from horror to excited curiosity.
The actor’s three children are desperately fighting for the scraps of their father’s love and the place he has prepared for his posthumous glory.
“Before death, birds hide. Truly great beasts die in the light of the lights,” begins a large article in the newspaper “Le Monde” about the Delon family feud.
Foto: colaimages / Alamy/ Vida Press
This story, as the newspaper writes, has all the elements of a classic Greek tragedy: a hostile family, a crumbling house that doesn’t remember even the echoes of laughter that once sounded in it. But the main thing is the suffering of the main character, who is haunted by the demons of his turbulent youth.
For the French, Delon is and remains the greatest embodiment of a predator – a seducer who charmed Europe in the drunken 1960s. He fascinated the audience in such cinema masterpieces as “Leopard” and “Rocco and his brothers”.
For decades, they just as passionately followed not only his prolific career, but also the vicissitudes of his very varied personal life, eagerly turning the pages of the magazine “Paris-Match” and other specialized publications on the life of celebrities.
They knew that Delon had three children: two sons and a daughter from two different women. Like the fact that he had a third son, whom the actor never acknowledged and who is no longer alive.
But in the last two weeks, the deepest division in the heart of the Delon family has been revealed: the three recognized children have found nothing better than to share their mutual grievances with the media. They did not shy away from insults, accusations, lawsuits, or secretly recorded conversations.
The first to take the stage was 59-year-old Anthony Delon, an actor and the son of Alain’s first wife Natalia. He gave an interview to “Paris-Match” in which he accused his younger (half-sister) Anushka of lies and intrigue, as she allegedly hid the results of their father’s cognitive ability tests.
Anushka, 33, the daughter of Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen and Delon’s second wife Alyona, remained silent and counterattacked, which was revealed in a statement released by her lawyer. It claimed that their shared father with Anthony “can no longer tolerate the aggressive behavior of his son, who constantly claims that he [tēvs] has remained unhealthy”.
The brother and sister did not stop there and publicly insulted each other again, this time appearing on French television.
After that, the actor’s third child, Anushka’s brother and Anthony’s half-brother – 29-year-old Alain-Fabien – intervened on his brother’s side in the conflict. He posted a secret recording on Instagram, in which (according to him) Anushka whispered something to her father about her brothers.
Then came the time for mutual legal proceedings related to the treatment of Delon, who suffered a stroke in 2019. The actor is also suffering from another serious illness, which the French media has not named.
He was examined by a court-appointed doctor on Saturday, January 13, but the children immediately disputed his opinion.
Courting passions around the old star is not limited to his children.
Somewhere in the background, another character flashes by: 66-year-old Hiromi Rollin, former farm manager and/or (depending on who you talk to) Delon’s lover.
Last year, the actor’s children, in a rare display of unanimity, kicked him out.
Rollina, on the other hand, filed a lawsuit against them, saying that they endangered her father’s life by not giving him the necessary medicine.
The action of the tragedy unfolds in a mansion built by Delon in a forest estate 120 km southeast of Paris. It is there that he lives with his youngest son, Alain Fabien. True, other children visit the father from time to time.
The estate is almost completely cut off from the outside world and, according to Alain-Fabien, has long since turned into a pitiful shadow of what it once was. “Everything keeps breaking, the electricity doesn’t work.”
The saddest thing is that all parties involved in the conflict admit that although Alain Delon is physically weak and does not always adequately perceive reality, he is still sane most of the time and aware of the terribleness of what is happening to his family.
Many French commentators believe that the roots of this tragedy lie deep in the actor’s own past life.
Delon’s childhood and youth were far from pretty. Perhaps the difficult events of the past have left such a deep mark on him that he has not been able to establish a normal relationship with his sons.
He was born on the outskirts of Paris in 1935. At the age of four, after his parents divorced, he had to live in a foster family.
Photo: IanDagnall Computing / Alamy/ Vida Press
He did not like school and often skipped classes. He enlisted in the military and fought in the Indochina War, but was court-martialed for stealing a jeep. Returning to Paris in the late 1950s, Delon lived in the environment of prostitutes and gangsters, but then, thanks to his extraordinary appearance, he entered the world of cinema.
As the newspaper “Le Monde” wrote: “There is no doubt that his enormous but completely unconscious pride led him to regard his sons as potential rivals whose ambitions should have been nipped in the bud.”
It’s no secret that Delon treated his sons very harshly, and as a result they used drugs, carried weapons and were in trouble with the law.
But it was completely different with my daughter. In 2008, he said of Anushka that “I’ve never told a woman I love her so often”.
Alain Delon with his beloved daughter Anushka in 2019. (Photo: ddp/abaca press/ Vida Press)
Delon’s third son was even less fortunate. His mother was a rock star from Germany, Niko (one of the members of the group “Velvet Underground”). Arii Buloņs was born in 1962, but Delon never acknowledged his paternity.
The boy was raised by Delon’s mother, who was convinced that he was really her grandson. Arii died last year in Paris of a drug overdose.
According to Delon’s will, half of his fortune will go to Anushka and the other will be divided between the two sons.
However, by all accounts, the disagreement between the siblings is not about money.
They fight desperately for their father’s love and what place they will be given in his posthumous biography.
2024-01-27 03:55:00
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