PARIS – French actor Alain Delon, who melted the hearts of millions of film fans whether playing a murderer, hoodlum or hitman in his postwar heyday, has died, his three children said on Sunday. He was 88.
Delon had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2019, rarely leaving his estate in Douchy, in France’s Val de Loire region.
President Emmanuel Macron hailed him as a giant of French culture.
“Alain Delon has played legendary roles and made the world dream. Lending his unforgettable face to shake up our lives. Melancholic, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: he was a French monument,” he posted on X.
With striking blue eyes, Delon was sometimes referred to as the “French Frank Sinatra” for his handsome looks, a comparison Delon disliked. Unlike Sinatra, who always denied connections with the Mafia, Delon openly acknowledged his shady pals in the underworld.
In a 1970 interview with the New York Times, Delon was asked about such acquaintances, one of whom was among the last “Godfathers” of the underworld in the Mediterranean port of Marseille.
“Most of them the gangsters I know … were my friends before I became an actor,” he said.
“I don’t worry about what a friend does. Each is responsible for his own act. It doesn’t matter what he does.”
Born just outside Paris on November 8, 1935, Delon was put in foster care aged four after his parents divorced.
He ran away from home at least once and was expelled several times from boarding schools before joining the Marines at 17 and serving in then French-ruled Indochina. There too he got into trouble over a stolen jeep.
Back in France in the mid-50s, he worked as a porter at Paris wholesale food market, Les Halles, and spent time in the red-light Pigalle district before migrating to the cafes of the bohemian St. Germain des Pres 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 scout who arranged a screen test.
He made his film debut in 1957 in “Quand la femme s’en mele” (“Send a Woman When the Devil Fails”).
Delon told Paris Match in an interview in 2018 he was fed up with modern life and had a chapel and tomb ready for him on the grounds of his home near Geneva, and for his Belgian shepherd dog, called Loubo.
Delon’s last major public appearance was to receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in May 2019.
In recent years, Delon was the centre of a family feud over his care, which made headlines in French media.
In April 2024 a judge placed Delon under “reinforced curatorship”, meaning he no longer had full freedom to manage his assets. He was already under legal protection over concerns over his health and well-being.
