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Alain Delon, the French film actor who starred in classics including Plein Soleil, Le Samouraï and Rocco and His Brothers, has died aged 88, his children have confirmed.
“His children, Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as [his dog] Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father,” according to a statement shared with the French media.
Delon passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family.
The actor has been in poor health in recent years and had a stroke in 2019.
Often dubbed the “male Brigitte Bardot” Delon had a hypnotic presence on screen and was routinely cast in roles as attractive yet angst filled men who were prone to sudden outbursts of anger.
Other works in his filmography include Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard , René Clément’s Purple Noon, Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Eclipse , Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein, and Jean-Pierre Melville’s The Red Circle. Despite his success in Europe, he never quite made it in Hollywood.
Delon was born in 1935 in the Paris suburb of Sceaux. His mother, Edith, worked at a pharmacy and his father, Fabien, ran a local cinema. At the age of four, Delon was sent to live with a foster family and then to a Catholic boarding school after his parents divorced.
The actor left education at 14 after being expelled from multiple schools and worked in his stepfather’s butcher’s shop before a short spell in the navy, which saw him deployed in France’s colonial war in Vietnam. He was dishonourably discharged in 1956 for stealing and crashing a Jeep.
The Plein Soleil star began his acting career when he was spotted by the Hollywood producer David O Selznick at Cannes film festival in 1659. Selznick offered Delon a seven-year contract if he improved his English and took him to Rome to screen test for Gone With the Wind, but the star decided to commit to French cinema and took his first role in Yves Allégret’s thriller Send a Woman When the Devil Fails.
Of his first role, Delon later told Vanity Fair: “I didn’t know how to do anything. Yves Allégret took one look at me and said: ‘Listen to me very carefully, Alain: Talk like you talk to me. Look like you look at me. Listen like you listen to me. Don’t act, live.’ That changed everything.”
More to follow…
