Paris: French actor and filmmaker Alain Delon, who starred in some of the great European films of the 1960s and ’70s, has died at the age of 88, The Hollywood Reporter reported.
“Alain Fabian, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as (their dog) Lubo are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully at his home in Douchey, surrounded by his three children and family,” a statement from the family said.
Delon had suffered from poor health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2019.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Delon appeared in a number of art house films that are now considered classics, including Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and The Leopard (1963), René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Eclipse (1962), Joseph Losey’s Mister Klein (1976) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967) and The Red Circle (1970).”
His tense and stoic acting, often as attractive men, was characterized by sudden outbursts of violence and emotion. He was often called the “male Brigitte Bardot”.
Despite producing dozens of films and acting in nearly 100, Delon received little acclaim in his lifetime. He won the French Cesar just once, for Bertrand Blier’s 1984 romance Our Story, in which he played an alcoholic who falls in love with a younger woman (Nathalie Baye). In 1995, he was given an Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlinale and in 2019 an Honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Delon was born on November 8, 1935, in Sceaux, an area in southern Paris. His father, Fabien, owned a local movie theater, while his mother, Edith, worked at a drugstore. After his parents separated in 1939, he was placed in a foster home before attending a Catholic boarding school. He earned a trade degree and worked temporarily at his stepfather’s butcher business in the Paris district of Bourget-la-Reine.
Delon was called up for military service at the age of 17 and joined the French Navy.
In 1956 Delon returned to Paris, where he worked odd jobs and frequented the clubs and cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where he met Jean-Claude Brialy, who had starred in early New Wave films such as Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge.
“Delon had a big success in 1960 with Purple Noon, which Clement (Forbidden Games) adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s book The Talented Mr. Ripley. As the seductive antihero Tom Ripley, Delon exuded charisma and malice in a thriller set against a breathtaking Mediterranean backdrop. The film was a critical and box office success, with some reviewers calling Delon “the new James Dean,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
