NATHALIE DELON

(1 August 1941 - 21 January 2021)

The French actress and director Nathalie Delon appeared in her first film, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai, with her then-husband Alain Delon. They had married in 1964 after Nathalie had divorced her first husband, Guy Barthḗlḗmy, after three years. The couple stayed together for almost five years, although it was a stormy marriage. Nathalie, who has died from cancer at the age of 79, went on to make thirty films and also directed two in a forty-year cinema career. After Le Samouri, she made more films in France and occasionally abroad. Army of Shadows (1969) was also from Jean-Pierre Melville, about underground resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France. It co-starred Lino Ventura and Jean-Pierre Cassel. Delon’s first British film, When Eight Bells Toll (1971), was based on the novel by Alistair MacLean, with Anthony Hopkins and Jack Hawkins. She made Easy Down There!, a comedy with Alain Delon, and Bluebeard, about a World War I pilot and serial killer, with Richard Burton. The Monk (1972) had a script by Luis Buñuel and a star part for Franco Nero. Many of Delon’s films were only for home consumption but she worked with Roger Vadim, Peter Whitehead and Joseph Losey, the last on The Romantic Englishwoman with Glenda Jackson and Michael Caine. Her last acting appearance was in Mensch, about a champion Jewish boxer in 2009. As a director she made They Call It an Accident (1982), about a boy killed by hospital error. She also wrote the film and appeared in it. Sweet Lies (1987) concerned an insurance investigator (Treat Williams) who is irresistible to young women. Nathalie Delon was the mother of two children, a daughter, Nathalie, and a son, Anthony Delon.

MICHAEL DARVELL