“The Tragic Life and Death of Ari Boulogne, Son of Alain Delon and Nico”

In fact, we should call Ari Boulogne the ‘probable’ son of Alain Delon: the French actor has always denied that he was the father of the man who settled down as a photographer after a turbulent childhood on two continents. His dead body was found in the night from Friday to Saturday in his flat in Paris, in a state of decomposition. The police arrested his partner on suspicion of culpable omission: Boulogne was in a wheelchair and would have been left alone for a long time.

Boulogne was the result of a relationship Delon had during the shooting of the movie full sun had with the actress Nico, who would become better known as the singer of The Velvet Underground. Delon, who was then officially with Romy Schneider, first denied the relationship with Nico, until it became difficult due to an excess of witnesses.

He has always denied his paternity, although that seems as indisputable as the relationship. Boulogne was even more like Delon than the sons the actor has acknowledged. Delon’s mother Edith raised and eventually adopted Boulogne with her second husband Paul Boulogne, who also gave the boy his family name. “No one will ever be able to take away the certainty that Ari is my son’s son,” Edith said in the German newspaper. Stuttgart News.

In the entourage of The Rolling Stones – Nico met Brian Jones in 1964, and recorded a few songs with him – Delon’s denial was also scorned. Marianne Faithfull, who can testify stoically about the worst excesses of the sixties, lost her sang-froid when a French journalist asked her about the actor at a press conference in 2002: ‘Delon is a swine’.

In an interview I had with Faithfull two years later, she was no less accusatory: ‘It’s a shame he never acknowledged that boy. It’s unfair what he says about Nico – she’s in a depression and was in need of money because he abandoned her.’

Ari Boulogne, born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1962 as Christian Aaron Päffgen – Nico’s real name was Christa Päffgen – certainly had a turbulent childhood. He traveled with his mother between Paris, London and New York, and on tour. Nico’s mother took over the boy’s care when her daughter became addicted to heroin, but was unable to keep it up because she suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Edith Boulogne flew to New York to get the boy she would raise until he came of age. Nico died in 1988 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

From that time on, Boulogne tried to be recognized by Delon. In 2001, a first application in Paris was rejected. An application for a DNA test was refused in 2021: the court declared itself incompetent because Delon lives in Switzerland. A second lawsuit was still pending.

Anthony Delon, son of Alain and Nathalie Delon, posted on Instagram ‘Rest in peace Ari. What a tragic fate. Sad. My thoughts go out to his two children.’