ALAIN DELON
(8 November 1935 - 18 August 2024)
The French actor Alain Delon, who has died at the age of 88 from B-cell lymphoma, worked with many international directors. His father François, a cinema projectionist, and his mother Edith, a chemist, divorced early, leaving four-year-old Alain to be fostered by a prison guard and his family. When they died, he returned to his own parents, although they had both remarried, so that the boy lived with two extended families. Packed off to a Catholic boarding school, he was good at singing and enjoyed music, but was an unruly pupil constantly being expelled wherever he went.
At the age of 17 he joined the French Navy but, after being caught stealing, he fought at Dien Bien Phu, then became a first-class seaman assigned to the Saigon arsenal. Still prone to thieving, he landed in prison at 20. He lived with an actress and at the 1957 Cannes film festival, he met his future agent and became part of the French film industry. His first appearance was in Yves Allégret’s Quand la femme s’en mele. A complete unknown, he was told by the director to just be himself. The advice worked and Delon suddenly had a film career. Of course, his stunning good looks didn’t hold him back. In 1958 he was chosen by the German actress Romy Schneider to be in Christine. She couldn’t speak French and he knew no German so, despite difficulties they ended up in a relationship. After that Delon had success as a leading man in Women Are Weak which was shown in the US, putting him on the international market and it was René Clement’s Plein Soleil (Purple Noon), based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, that did it. More offers were made but not for Lawrence of Arabia, for which he had been touted. But he did get to play the title role in Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and went on to be in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse with Monica Vitti. He then wangled his way into Any Number Can Win with Jean Gabin, which earned him a contract with MGM. The film made more money at the French box-office than Visconti’s The Leopard in which Delon played Prince Tancredi Falconeri. Following the success of Christian-Jaque’s The Black Tulip, Delon moved abroad. His first film away from France was The Yellow Rolls Royce, Anthony Asquith’s omnibus based around a car, and Delon appeared with Shirley MacLaine. In the US he made Once a Thief with Ann-Margret but it failed and so his next film (with Sam Peckinpah) was cancelled.
For Columbia he did the French Foreign Legion action-drama Lost Command with Anthony Quinn. Universal cast him in Texas Across the River with Dean Martin but Delon seemed out of place, so returned to France for Clement’s Is Paris Burning? He was more at home, literally, in French productions such as Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai and those directed by Julien Duvivier, Louis Malle and, oddly enough, Jack Cardiff, whose The Girl on a Motorcycle, with Marianne Faithfull, was a huge hit. Perhaps the attraction Delon had was a complex one due to his upbringing as a bad boy which translated to the screen. Playing parts such as the bisexual Tom Ripley, the hitman in Le Samourai and the murderous interloper of Jacques Deray’s La piscine with such conviction, he seemed to be living the roles he played. A change came, however, in Melville’s last film, the thriller Un Flic, where Delon was cast as a police commissioner.
He had played gangsters in Henri Verneuil’s The Sicilian Clan, Deray’s Borsalino with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Melville’s heist film The Red Circle with Yves Montand, and he was the killer in Joseph Losey’s The Assassination of Trotsky, with Richard Burton. His career continued with a mixture of genres – thrillers, a swashbuckler and other crime and gangster movies. But he had other interests too – racing horses, boxing promotions, a helicopter business, the making of furniture and luxury goods. From the 1980s he filmed with Bertrand Blier, Jean-Luc Godard, Patrice Leconte, and played an aristocratic dandy in Volker Schlöndorff’s Swann in Love. In 1999 he became a Swiss citizen, moving to Geneva. A few more films included Asterix at the Olympic Games with Gérard Depardieu, TV shows and stage work. He also made recordings with, among others, Shirley Bassey.
Never one to be without personal troubles, Delon became involved in lawsuits for the death of his bodyguard, incriminating photographs of politicians, psychological harassment, violence and abuse as well as his family inheritance problems. In 2019 he received an honorary Palme d’Or for his lifetime’s work. It was presented by his daughter Anouchka, whose mother was Rosalie van Breeman. He was married to the actress Nathalie Delon from 1964 to 1969. He also had notable relationships with Romy Schneider and the singer-model Nico. Alain Delon won many film awards for his work and was decorated by the French Ordre National du Merite, the Legion d’honneur, the Order of Ouissam Alouite of Morocco and, last year, the Order of Merit presented by Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
MICHAEL DARVELL