Alain Delon French Actor (1935–2024)

Early life

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon was born on 8 November 1935 in Sceaux, a suburb south of Paris. His father worked as a cinema projectionist and later managed a cinema, and his mother worked in a pharmacy. They divorced in 1939, and both later remarried. Delon spent part of his childhood with a foster family and then in Catholic boarding schools, where he sang in the choir but was repeatedly expelled for fighting and misbehaviour.

In his early teens he left school, trained as a pork butcher and worked in his stepfather's delicatessen. At seventeen he joined the French Navy and was posted to French Indochina. After returning to France in 1956 he took casual jobs in Paris, including work at the Les Halles market and as a café waiter.

Career

Delon's first screen appearance was a brief part in the short film Le rapt (1949), made while he was still at school. His route into the profession came in 1957, when a visit to the Cannes Film Festival put him in contact with agents and producers. A screen test in Rome led to an offer from the American producer David O. Selznick, but Delon instead accepted a role in Yves Allégret's Quand la femme s'en mêle. In 1958 he played opposite Romy Schneider in Christine, and the pair were widely followed by the press as a couple.

His breakthrough came in 1960 with two films. In René Clément's Purple Noon he played Tom Ripley, and in Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers he took the title role. He worked with Visconti again on The Leopard (1963), as Tancredi Falconeri, and with Michelangelo Antonioni on L'Eclisse (1962). For Any Number Can Win (1963) he took a share of the distribution rights rather than a fixed fee, an arrangement that became known in France as "Delon's method".

In the mid-1960s he tried to build a career in Hollywood with films such as Once a Thief (1965), Lost Command (1966) and Is Paris Burning? (1966), but they did not do well with American audiences. He returned to French cinema and made some of his best-known films with Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Samouraï (1967), in which he played a solitary contract killer, Le Cercle rouge (1970) and Un flic (1972). Other work of the period includes La Piscine (1969), Borsalino (1970), which he also produced, and the Western Red Sun (1971) with Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune.

He played Zorro in a 1975 film, and received a César nomination for Monsieur Klein (1976). He also turned to directing and writing, including To Kill a Cop (1981) and Le Battant (1983), both of which he directed and co-wrote. In 1984 he won the César Award for Best Actor for Bertrand Blier's Notre histoire, and in the same year played Baron de Charlus in Swann in Love. In 1990 he appeared in Jean-Luc Godard's Nouvelle Vague.

In 1997 he said he would stop acting, though he took occasional roles afterwards. These included the television series Fabio Montale (2001) and Julius Caesar in the comedy Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008). His last credited screen appearance was in the 2019 film Disclaimer.

Outside film, Delon recorded the spoken part of the 1973 song "Paroles… Paroles…", a duet with Dalida, and released a single in 2019. He promoted boxing matches, and put his name to watches, clothing, eyewear and perfume. He obtained Swiss citizenship in 1999.

Recognition

In 1995 Delon received the Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. At the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 he was given an honorary Palme d'Or, presented to him by his daughter Anouchka. His other honours include France's Legion of Honour, the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Moroccan Order of Ouissam Alaouite, and, in 2023, a third-class Order of Merit from Ukraine.

Personal life

Delon became engaged to Romy Schneider in 1959, but their relationship ended in 1964. They worked together again on La Piscine (1969). On 13 August 1964 he married Nathalie Barthélémy, who took the name Nathalie Delon, and their son, Anthony Delon, was born on 30 September 1964. They divorced in 1969. He later had a relationship with the actress Mireille Darc that lasted until 1982.

With the Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen he had two more children, a daughter, Anouchka Delon, born on 25 November 1990, and a son, Alain-Fabien Delon, born on 18 March 1994.

Delon died on 18 August 2024 at his home in Douchy. He was buried a few days later in a private chapel on his estate there.