French acting star Alain Delon, whose many iconic roles included Le Samouraï, Plein Soleil and The Leopard, has died in France at the age of 88.
The actor’s children said in a statement that their father had passed away in the early hours of Sunday, surrounded by his family and beloved Belgian Shepherd Loubo, in his long-time chateau home in the village of Douchy, in the Le Loiret region some 100 miles south of Paris.
Delon’s death marks the passing of one of the last surviving icons of the French cinema scene of the 1960s and 70s, when the country was on an economic roll as it reconstructed in the wake of World War Two.
The star, who was at the peak of this career from the 1960s to the 1980s, fell into acting by chance.
Born on November 8, 1935, in the Paris suburb of Sceaux, he had a turbulent childhood after his parents divorced when he was still young.
After training briefly as a butcher in his step-father’s business, he entered military school at the age of 17. After being caught stealing equipment, he was given the choice of expulsion or signing up for a tour of duty in Southeast Asia (then Indochina).
Delon fought in the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 but wound up in trouble again after he crashed a jeep he had stolen and returned to France in 1956.
Having moved to Paris, where he did odd jobs to make ends meet, Delon got his first introduction to the cinema world through his relationship with actress Brigitte Auber, who had recently appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief.
After they hooked up, she took him to the Cannes Film Festival in 1957, where he met the actor and director Jean-Claude Brialy as well as his future agent George Beaume.
“I came down with a girl that I liked, who loved me… I took it all in, did the red carpet but even then, I felt at home… not least and I say this without pretension because it was made clear to me that I was not bad looking.“ he told a Cannes masterclass in 2019.
His next big break came via the actress Michèle Cordoue, with whom he had an affair. She convinced her husband, director Yves Allégret, to give him a small role in his film Quand la femme s’en mêle.
Delon was candid about the role women had played in his early career.
“If I hadn’t met the women I met, I would have died long ago. It’s the women – I don’t know why – who loved me, who got me into this profession, who wanted me to do it, and who fought for me to do it,” he told a masterclass at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.
His career took off quickly from there, with Delon then appearing in Marc Allégret’s Sois belle et tais-toi, which also featured Jean-Paul Belmondo in the cast, followed by Pierre Gaspard-Huit’s Christine, which would see Delon appear opposite Romy Schneider.
It would mark the beginning of one the most celebrated cinema love stories of the time. Schneider was already famous on the back of her Sissi roles, while 23-year-old Delon was still an unknown.
The relationship lasted just five years, but they remained close, famously reuniting on the big screen in Jacques Deray’s The Swimming Pool in 1969.
Other high-profile partners across Delon’s packed, often torrid love life included German actress, singer and model Nico, the singer Dalida, and the actress Mireille Darc, who was his partner for 15 years after they met on the set of Jean Herman’s 1969 gangster drama Jeff.
Delon’s star began to rise with René Clément’s 1960 crime thriller Plein Soleil, for his performance as the deadly Tom Ripley. The same year, he also starred in Luchino Visconti’s Milan-set melodrama Rocco and His Brothers.
Other highlights of his early career include Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1962 romantic drama The Eclipse, in which he starred opposite Monica Vitti.
Delon would reunite with Visconti on The Leopard in 1963, co-starring alongside Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster. His performance garnered him a nomination for most promising male newcomer in the 1964 Golden Globes.
