French actor Alain Delon dies at age 88

PARIS: French actor Alain Delon, who in his post-war glory days melted the hearts of millions of film fans, whether he played a killer, gangster or hitman, has died, French media reported today. He was 88.

Delon had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2019 and rarely left his estate in Douchy, in the Frances Val de Loire region.

With his striking blue eyes, Delon was sometimes called the French Frank Sinatra because of his good looks, a comparison Delon did not appreciate. Unlike Sinatra, who always denied having any ties to the Mafia, Delon openly acknowledged his shady friends in the underworld.

In a 1970 interview with the New York Times, Delon was asked about such acquaintances. One of them was one of 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. Everyone is responsible for their own actions. It doesn’t matter what they do.

Delon rose to fame in two films by Italian director Luchino Visconti: Rocco and His Brothers in 1960 and The Leopard in 1963.

He starred opposite the venerable French elder Jean Gabin in Henri Verneuil’s 1963 film Melodie en Sous-Sol (Any Number Can Win) and was a big hit in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 Le Samourai (The Godson). The role of a philosophical assassin featured minimal dialogue and frequent solo scenes, and Delon shined.

Delon became a star in France and was idolized by men and women in Japan, but he never made it to Hollywood, despite appearing with American film giants, including Burt Lancaster when the Frenchman played the apprentice assassin Scorpio in the 1973 film of the same name.

In the 1970 film Borsalino, he co-starred with fellow French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo as gangsters who engage in an unforgettable, stylized fight over a woman.

Highlights also included the 1969 erotic thriller La Piscine (The Swimming Pool), in which Delon teams up with his real-life lover Romy Schneider in a sultry saga of jealousy and seduction on the French Riviera.

Man in trouble

Delon was born on November 8, 1935, just outside Paris. His life began on a low flame: at the age of four, he was placed in foster care 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 then French-ruled Indochina, where he also got into trouble for a stolen jeep.

In the mid-1950s he returned to France and worked as a porter at the Parisian wholesale food market, Les Halles. He also spent time in the red-light district of Pigalle, before moving to the cafés of the bohemian St Germain des Pres district.

There he met French actor Jean-Claude Brialy, who took him to the Cannes Film Festival. There he caught the attention of an American talent scout, who arranged a screen test for him.

He made his film debut in 1957 in Quand la femme sen mele (When the Devil Fails, Send a Woman).

Sulphurous friends

Delon was both a businessman and an actor, who used his looks to sell branded cosmetics and dabbled in racehorses with old underworld friends. He invested in a racehorse stable with Jacky Le Mat Imbert, a notorious figure in a thriving Marseille crime scene.

Delon’s shadier friendships came to the surface when a former bodyguard/confidant, a young Yugoslav named Stefan Markovic, was found dead in a bag, with a bullet in his head, dumped in a garbage dump near Paris.

The actor was questioned by police and acquitted, but the Markovic affair grew into a national scandal.

The man charged by police with Markovic’s murder, and later acquitted, was Francois Marcantoni, a Corsican café owner and friend of Delon who lived in the bustling Pigalle district in the aftermath of World War II.

pronounced

Delon was also outspoken off stage, causing controversy when he said he regretted the abolition of the death penalty and spoke disparagingly about gay marriage, which was legalized in France in 2013.

He publicly defended the far-right Front National and called founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, an old friend, to congratulate him when the party performed well in local elections in 2014.

Delon’s lovers included Schneider and the German model and singer Nico, with whom he had a son.

In 1964 he married Nathalie Barthelemy and had a second son, after which he ended the marriage and began a 15-year relationship with Mireille Darc. He had two more children with Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen.

In a January 2018 interview, Delon told Paris Match that he had had enough of modern life and had had a chapel and tomb built on the grounds of his home near Geneva, and for his Belgian Shepherd dog, Loubo.

If I die before him, I will ask the vet if we can go together. He will give the dog an injection so he can die in my arms.

Delon’s last major public appearance was when he received a Palme d’Honor at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019.

In his final years, Delon was at the centre of a family feud over his care, which made headlines in the French media.

In April 2024, a judge placed Delon under enhanced guardianship, meaning he no longer had full freedom to manage his assets. He was already under legal protection due to concerns about his health and well-being.