French film legend Delon dies at age 88

French actor Alain Delon, who in his post-war glory days melted the hearts of millions of film fans, whether he played a murderer, a gangster or a hitman, has died, his three children said yesterday. He was 88.

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

French President Emmanuel Macron praised him as a giant of French culture. “Alain Delon played legendary roles and made the world dream. He lent his unforgettable face to shake up our lives. Melancholic, popular, mysterious, he was more than a star: he was a French monument,” he posted on X.

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 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. I don’t worry about what a friend does. Everyone is responsible for his own act. It doesn’t matter what he does.”

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 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 hitman involved 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 starring alongside 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.