Alain Delon, France’s flawed screen god

Seen here in 1968 with German actress Romy Schneider, Alain Delon divided opinion until the end – Copyright AFP –

Fiachra GIBBONS

Actor Alain Delon — who has died Sunday aged 88 — was France’s greatest screen seducer.

To some he was the sexiest man of the 20th century who played the impeccably tailored, ice-cold killers popularised by 1960s New Wave films to perfection.

To others, the man who often referred to himself in the third person and admitted to having slapped a woman, was an egotistical chauvinist, with feminists appalled by the lifetime achievement award the Cannes film festival gave him in 2019.

His millions of fans, from France to Japan — where Delon was adored as an idol of male beauty — were prepared to overlook his failings.

The whiff of sulphur and his angelic face also proved an irresistible combination to a long line of glamorous actresses who fell for him.

In a note to Delon on his 80th birthday, one of his oldest friends, fellow 1960s icon Brigitte Bardot, called him “an eagle with two heads… the best and the worst.”

Delon’s legend was launched in 1960, playing pretty boy killers and mysterious schemers in “Purple Noon” — later remade as “The Talented Mr Ripley” — and Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard”. 

He then set the template for one of Hollywood’s favourite tropes — the mysterious, cerebral hitman — with his staggering performance as the silent killer in Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samurai” (1967).

Directors from Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino to Hong Kong’s John Woo all acknowledge a debt to the inner life Delon gave his stylish killer.

– Angel and demon –

And then there were the affairs. Many ended in heartbreak and tragedy, including in the case of his long and stormy relationship with the German actress Romy Schneider with whom he starred in “The Swimming Pool” (1969).

“The love of my life” — as Delon repeatedly called her — was found dead at her home at the age of 43, less than a year after her son was killed in a freak accident, impaled on a railing. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest.

While living his “great passion” with Schneider, Delon reportedly fathered a son with her compatriot, the Velvet Underground singer Nico.

He always denied the child was his, yet Delon’s mother brought up the boy, Ari Boulogne, who bore a striking resemblance to Delon and insisted he was his son until his death in 2023, aged 60, from a heroin overdose.

“I was programmed for success, not happiness. The two don’t go together,” said Delon, who claimed to have always defined himself through women.

“It’s in them, through the look in the eyes of my first wife, Nathalie, from Romy, (actress and longtime partner) Mireille (Darc), or the mother of my children (Rosalie van Breemen), that I drew the motivation to be who I am,” he said.

Yet two of his sons accused him of domestic violence, with one saying Delon had broken eight of his mother’s ribs and her nose twice.

Delon denied this but admitted to slapping women who attacked him.

– Traumatic childhood –

His own childhood was a troubled affair, put into a children’s home for a time by his mother. 

As a teenage soldier he fought to keep Indochina French before being dishonourably discharged for theft.

Despite the mixed emotions he generated, film historian Jean-Michel Frodon said no other French male actor in the last half century “had the same screen presence”. 

French actor Vincent Lindon, who won the best actor award at Cannes in 2015, described Delon’s looks as ” hypnotising”

“You can look at photos of him for hours and hours,” he told AFP.

But Delon never really made the transition to Hollywood despite his huge following in China and Japan, which would later drive sales of his perfume brand. 

– Links with far right –

His complicated private life kept him in the headlines.

He didn’t just play baddies, he consorted with them. He was arrested in 1968 after his former bodyguard, Stevan Markovic, was found with a bullet in his neck.

Police suspected Markovic of having an affair with Delon’s wife Nathalie in a case that captured the nation’s attention.

Before it was finally dropped, unsolved, a Corsican gangster friend of Delon’s spent a year in prison charged with the killing before being released.

Delon effectively quit film around 2000, appearing mostly on television afterwards though he was tempted back to the big screen to play Julius Caesar in an Asterix film in 2008. 

In later years, he became a polarising figure over his support for the far-right National Front (later renamed the National Rally), whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, he called a “dear friend”.

He stirred further controversy in 2016 by jumping to the defence of ex-minister Nadine Morano who declared France a “white race country” that she didn’t want to see become Muslim. 

“She has the balls to say it,” Delon said. “I take off my hat to her. I don’t give a shit, I say what I think and I will continue to do so.”

In June 2019, he suffered a debilitating stroke and rarely left his estate in the central Loiret region of France thereafter.

As he became weaker, his three children engaged in open warfare over his estate.

The three — Anthony, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien — first filed a complaint accusing his Japanese companion and former carer, Hiromi Rollin, of trying to take advantage of their father. 

When that case was thrown out they turned on each other in January 2024, with Anthony accusing Anouchka, the favourite child, of preying on their “weakened” father. 

Delon said through a lawyer he would report his son to the police.