PARIS (AP) — French actor Alain Delon, who melted the hearts of millions of movie fans playing assassins, gangsters or hitmen in the post-war heyday of the 19th century, has died, French media reported Sunday. He was 88.
Delon had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2019, and rarely left his estate in Dauchy in France’s Val de Loire region.
Delon, with striking blue eyes, was sometimes referred to as the “French Frank Sinatra” because of his handsome appearance, a comparison that Delon disliked. Unlike Sinatra, who always denied ties with the Mafia, Delon openly acknowledged his dubious friends in the underworld.
In an interview with The New York Times in 1970, Delon was asked about such acquaintances, one of whom was one of the last “godfathers” of the underworld in the Mediterranean port of Marseille.
“Most of the gangsters I know were my friends before I became an actor,” he said. “I don’t care what my friend does. Everyone is responsible for his own work. It doesn’t matter what he does.”
Delon found fame in two films by Italian director Luchino Visconti, 1960’s “Rocco and His Brothers” and 1963’s “The Leopard.”
He starred opposite venerable French elder Jean Gabin in Henri Verneuil’s 1963 film “Melody en sous-sol” and had a big hit in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 “Le Samourai.” The role of a philosophical contract killer involved minimal dialogue and frequent solo scenes, and Delon shone.
Delon became a star in France and was idolised by men and women in Japan too, but he never became as big a name in Hollywood, although he acted alongside legends of American cinema, including Burt Lancaster when the Frenchman played apprentice-hitman Scorpio in the 1973 film of the same name.
He starred opposite French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo in the 1970 film “Borsalino,” playing gangsters who clash in an unforgettable, stylized battle for a woman.
These include the 1969 erotic thriller “La Piscine,” in which Delon teamed up with real-life girlfriend Romy Schneider in an erotic French Riviera saga of jealousy and seduction.
Troubled man
Born near Paris on 8 November 1935, Delon had a difficult life: he was placed in foster care at the age of four after his parents divorced.
He ran away from home at least once and was expelled from boarding schools several times before joining the Marines at age 17 and serving in what was then French-ruled Indochina. There, too, he got into trouble over a stolen jeep.
Returning to France in the mid-1950s he worked as a porter at Les Halles, the Paris wholesale food market, and spent some time in the red-light Pigalle district before moving to the cafes of the bohemian Saint Germain des Prés area.
There he met French actor Jean-Claude Brialy, who took him to the Cannes Film Festival, where he attracted the attention of an American talent spotter who arranged a screen test for him.
She made her film debut in 1957 in “Quand la femme s’en mêlé”.
sulfur friend
Delon was a businessman as well as an actor, using his looks to sell branded cosmetics and dabbling in racehorses with old underworld friends. He invested in racehorse stables with Jacky “Le Mat” Imbert, a notorious figure in the Marseille crime scene.
Delon’s more vulgar friendships came to the surface when his former bodyguard-cum-confidant, a young Yugoslav named Stefan Markovic, was found dead in a bag, shot in the head, and dumped in a garbage dump near Paris.
The police questioned the actor and declared him innocent, but the “Marković case” turned into a national scandal.
The man police accused of Markovic’s murder—and was later acquitted—was François Marcantoni, a Corsican café owner and friend of Delon’s who thrived in the bustling Pigalle district after World War II.
Outspoken
Delon has also been outspoken offstage and has courted controversy in doing so – most notably when he said he regretted the abolition of the death penalty and spoke disparagingly about gay marriage, which was legalised in France in 2013.
He publicly defended the far-right National Front and phoned its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, a longtime friend, to congratulate him when the party did well in local elections in 2014.
Delon’s lovers included Schneider and German model-turned-singer Nico, with whom he had a son. In 1964, he married Nathalie Barthélemy and fathered a second son before the marriage ended and he began a 15-year relationship with Mireille Darc. He had two more children with Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen.
In an interview in January 2018, Delon told Paris Match that he was fed up with modern life and had commissioned a chapel and mausoleum for him and his Belgian shepherd dog, called Loubo, in the grounds of his home near Geneva.
“If I die before him I will ask the vet to let us go together. He will give the dog an injection so he can die in my arms.”
Delon’s last major public appearance was to receive the Honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019.
In his final years, Delon was the focus of a family feud over his care, which generated headlines in the French media.
In April 2024, a judge placed Delon under “reinforced curatorship,” meaning he no longer has full freedom to manage his assets. He was already under legal protection due to concerns over his health and well-being.
