PARIS — Alain Delon, the internationally acclaimed French actor who embodied bad guys and cops and set hearts racing around the world, has died at the age of 88, French media reported.
With his handsome looks and gentle demeanor, this prolific actor combines toughness with a graceful and vulnerable quality, making him one of France’s leading men.
Delon is also a producer. He also appeared in plays, and in later years, in television films.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to X for a “French monument.”
“Alain Delon has played a legendary role and made the world dream,” he wrote. “Melancholic, popular, secretive, he is more than a star.”
Delon’s children announced the death on Sunday in a statement to the French national news agency Agence France-Presse, a common practice in France. Tributes to Delon immediately began to spread on social platforms, and all the leading French media switched to full coverage of his rich career.
Earlier this year, his son Anthony said his father was diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma, a type of cancer.
Over the past year, Delon’s fragile state of health has become a family issue over treatment that has led to bitter exchanges through the media between the three children.
Early in his career, in the 1960s and 1970s, Delon was sought after by some of the world’s top directors, from Luchino Visconti to Joseph Losey.
In recent years, Delon has become disillusioned with the film industry, saying that money has killed his dreams. “Money, commerce and television have destroyed the dream machine,” he wrote in a 2003 edition of the newsweekly, Le Nouvel Observateur. “My cinema is dead. And me too.”
But he continued to work often, appearing in several TV movies during the 70s.
Delon’s presence is unforgettable, whether playing a morally depraved hero or a famous man. He won acclaim in 1960 with “Plein Soleil”, directed by Réne Clément, in which he played a murderer trying to figure out the identity of his victims.
He made many Italian films, especially with Visconti in the film “Rocco and His Brothers” in 1961, where Delon portrayed a brother who sacrificed himself to help his brother. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Visconti’s 1963 film “Le Guepard” (The Leopard) starring Delon won the Palme d’Or, the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival. Other films include Clément’s “Is Paris Burning,” with screenplays by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola among others; “La Piscine” (The Sinners), directed by Jacques Deray; and, on departure, Losey’s “The Assassination of Trotsky” in 1972.
In 1968, Delon began producing films – 26 in 1990 – part of a frenzied and confident momentum that he maintained throughout his life.
That confidence can be felt in his statement to Femme in 1996, ‘I like to be loved as much as I love myself!’ It echoes his charismatic screen persona.
Delon continued to wow audiences over the years – while criticizing what he considered to be outdated commentary. In 2010, he appeared in “Un mari de trop” (“One Husband Too Many”) and returned to the stage in 2011 with “An Ordinary Day,” together with his daughter Anouchka.
She briefly presided over the Miss France jury but resigned in 2013 after disagreeing with several controversial statements, including criticism of women, LGBTQIA+ rights, and migrants. Despite the controversy, he received the Palme d’Honneur at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, a decision that sparked further debate.
The Cannes Film Festival on Sunday expressed “sadness”. Delon “realized French cinema far from its borders,” he said, in a statement.
The Brigitte Bardot Foundation, dedicated to the protection of animals, paid tribute to “an extraordinary person, an unforgettable artist and a good friend of animals,” in a statement released on social media. Delon was a “close friend” of French film legend Brigitte Bardot “whose death is deeply saddened,” the statement said. “We lost a precious friend and a man with a big heart.”
French film producer Alain Terzian said Delon was “the last giant.”
“This is a changed page in the history of French cinema,” he told France Inter radio. Terzian, who produced several films directed by Delon, recalls that “every time he came anywhere … there was an almost mystical, quasi-religious reverence. He was amazing.
Born on November 8, 1935, in Sceaux, south of Paris, Delon was placed in a foster family after his parents separated at the age of 4. He then attended a Roman Catholic boarding school.
At 17, Delon joined the navy and was sent to Indochina. Back in France in 1956, he held various odd jobs from waiter to operator at a Paris meat market before turning to acting.
Delon had a son, Anthony, in 1964 with his wife Nathalie Canovas, who starred with him in Jean-Pierre Melville’s “The Samurai” in 1967. He had two more children, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, with his next partner, Rosalie van Breemen , with whom he produced a song and a video clip in 1987. He is also believed to be the father of Ari Boulogne, the son of German model and singer Nico, although he has never acknowledged paternity.
“I’m good at three things: my job, stupidity and children,” he said in a 1995 L’Express interview.
Delon juggled various activities throughout his life, from setting up a stable of trotting horses to developing cologne for men and women, followed by watches, glasses and other accessories. He also collected paintings and sculptures.
Delon announced the end of his acting career in 1999, only to continue, appearing in Bertrand Blier’s “Les Acteurs” (The Actors) the same year. Later he appeared in several television police shows.
His good looks kept him going. In August 2002, Delon told the weekly magazine, L’Humanite Hebdo, that he would not have stayed in the business otherwise.
“You will never see me old and ugly,” he said when he was almost 70, “because I will go before, or I will die.”
However, in 2019, Delon expressed his feelings about the meaning of his life during a gala event in his honor at the Cannes Film Festival. “One thing I’m sure of is that if there’s one thing I’m proud of, really, only one thing, it’s my career.”
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Retired AP correspondent Elaine Ganley contributed biographical material to this story.
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This story has been corrected to remove a reference to Delon appearing in “The Empty House” in 2022.