Alain Delon, icon of French cinema, dies at 88

Actor Alain Delon died on Sunday at the age of 88 at his home in Douchy, his children announced in a statement.

Delon, actor in films such as The Leopard, In full sun, The silence of a man (The Samurai), Borsalino, The Pool o The Sicilian Clan, He suffered a stroke in 2019 from which he never fully recovered.

Due to his poor health, the actor rarely left his estate in Douchy, in the Loire Valley, in his later years.

Because of his blue eyes and physical attractiveness, Delon was sometimes nicknamed the Frank Sinatra Frencha comparison Delon never liked. Unlike Sinatra, who always denied having any ties to the mafia, Delon openly acknowledged his shady friendships in this underworld.

Delon rose to fame thanks to two films by the Italian director Luchino Visconti, Rocco and his brothers in 1960 and The Leopard in 1963.

He starred alongside the Frenchman Jean Gabin Henri Verneuil’s 1963 film Great move on the French Riviera and had great success in The silence of a man by Jean-Pierre Melville from 1967.

Despite being a star in FranceDelon never made it in Hollywood Despite acting with several American film stars, such as Burt Lancaster when the Frenchman played the apprentice hitman Scorpio in the 1973 film of the same name.

In Borsalino In 1970, he acted alongside his compatriot and French actor Jean-Paul Belmondoplaying two gangsters who come to blows in an unforgettable fight over a woman.

Highlights also included the 1969 erotic thriller The Poolwhere Delon acted alongside his real-life lover Romy Schneider.

Cinema, his salvation

Born on the outskirts of Paris on November 8, 1935, His childhood was not easy. At just four years old, she was placed in a foster family after her parents divorced.

He ran away from home at least once and was also expelled several times from different boarding schools before joining the Marines at 17 and serving in then French-ruled Indochina. There he also got into trouble after stealing a jeep.

Back in his homeland in the mid-1950s, he worked as a security guard at Paris’s wholesale food market, Les Halles, and spent time in the red-light district of Pigalle before migrating to the cafés of the bohemian St. Germain des Pres area.

There he met the French actor Jean-Claude Brialy, who took him to the Festival of Canneswhere she attracted the attention of an American talent scout who arranged a screen test. She made her film debut in 1957 in When women get involved.

The character of Rocco, played by Alain Delon, in a frame from the film.

Wikipedia

Delon’s dangerous friendships came to light when a former bodyguard and confidant, a young Yugoslav named Stefan Markovic, was found dead in a bag with a bullet in his head in a garbage dump near Paris. The actor was questioned and acquitted by the police, but the caso Markovic became a national scandal.

The man who was charged by police with Markovic’s murder, but was later acquitted, was Francois Marcantoniowner of a Corsican café and friend of Delon who prospered in the Pigalle district after the Second World War.

Controversial and with a busy love life

Off the stage, Delon was the subject of several Controversies over his statements. Among them, some in which he regretted the abolition of the death penalty or his homophobic comments on account of same-sex marriage, which was legalized in France in 2013.

In addition, the interpreter publicly defended the far-right National Front and even called its founder Jean-Marie Le Penan old friend of Delon, to congratulate him when the party achieved very good results in the 2014 municipal elections.

Among Delon’s list of lovers were Schneider and the German model turned singer Nicowith whom he had a sonIn 1964, he married Nathalie Barthelemy and had a second child before ending the marriage and embarking on a 15-year relationship with Mireille Darc. He had two more children with the Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen.

Delon’s last major public appearance was to receive the Honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019.

Given the deterioration of his health and after having requested a assisted suicidea judge appointed a legal guardian in April 2024 to manage his fortune in the absence of an agreement between his children on how to proceed.