(Paris) A solitary, tormented and controversial sphinx, the French actor Alain Delon, who died Sunday morning, was a cinema legend, whose beauty and magnetism fascinated the greatest directors, without this being enough to appease his demons.
Shadow and light, this is the duality that the actor has embodied throughout his life. It draws a personality that does not seek to be loved and that displays its bitterness and misanthropy.
Alain Delon has “a rather self-destructive personality and is in search of his own identity,” explained director Joseph Losey (Mr. Klein1976). “He is a tragedy,” the director wrote in a letter to his wife in 1976.
Delon repeated it, he was not a comedian, but an actor. Who “lived” his roles. And who had never dreamed of cinema, as a teenager.
Murderous thug with azure eyes in Full sun (1960), silent hitman in The Samurai (1967), alcoholic mechanic in Our story (1984)… His face, his gaze and his gestures have etched the film.
He captivated the directors of the Trente Glorieuses, in France as in Italy (Clément, Visconti, Antonioni, Melville, Losey etc.), with the notable exception of the New Wave. “They didn’t want me”. However, he would play for Godard in… New wave, in 1990.
Only one Caesar
Born on November 8, 1935 in Sceaux (Hauts-de-Seine), Alain Delon said he was unhappy as a child, tossed between two families – his parents separated and each started their own lives. Destined to become a butcher’s assistant, he gave it all up and joined the marine fusiliers in Indochina at the age of 17.
He was 20 when he returned to Paris. He trafficked on the edge of legality in Pigalle but his insolent beauty opened the doors of cinema to him. He made his debut in 1957 in When the woman gets involvedby Yves Allégret.
A year later, he met Romy Schneider, already a star thanks to Sissi.
What followed was a five-year affair, passionate, stormy and publicized, and an unbreakable bond between these two actors who were not very gifted for happiness.
His career took off. He produced several masterpieces and great popular successes: Full sun And Is Paris burning? (Rene Clement), Rocco and his brothers, The Leopard (Luchino Visconti), The Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni), The Samurai, The Red Circle, A Cop (Jean-Pierre Melville), The Swimming Pool, Borsalino (Jacques Deray)…
Alain Delon and Romy Schneider in The Swimming Pool (1969) by Jacques Deray
Despite a hundred films, many of which have become legends, he only won one César (in 1985 for Our story by Bertrand Blier) and received an honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019 for his entire career.
A few weeks later, he had a stroke from which he recovered with difficulty as he also suffered from lymphoma.
The actor had not worked in films for years. “The filmmakers I could work with are dead,” he told the World in 2018. But he would have liked, “before dying, to make a film under the direction of a woman.”
American feminists had strongly protested during the Cannes tribute to the French actor, describing him as “racist, homophobic and misogynistic”.
“We are not going to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Alain Delon, we are going to give him the honorary Palme d’Or for his acting career!” replied Thierry Frémaux, general delegate of the Festival.
Dangerous Liaisons and Family Quarrels
It must be said that the man has always had a knack for stirring up controversy: off-the-cuff statements about women or the modern world (which he “vomits”), open sympathies for the right of the right (going against the grain of the world of cinema) and this bizarre habit of speaking of himself in the third person.
Not to mention his dangerous liaisons, at one time, with some crooks. “I had a lot of dealings with organized crime, I even touched it with my finger,” he confessed in 2021.
In 1968, his former right-hand man, Stevan Markovic, was found murdered in a forest, the actor was questioned and the story turned into a state affair.
Delon said he drew his “motivation to be what he was” from women: Romy Schneider, Nathalie Delon, married in 1964 – his only marriage – and mother of his son Anthony, Mireille Darc, his partner for 15 years, and the Dutchwoman Rosalie Van Breemen, with whom he had Anouchka and Alain-Fabien.
An art lover and collector (paintings, wines, weapons, etc.), he was also a great admirer of General de Gaulle and had bought the original manuscript of the Appeal of June 18 at auction to offer it to his country.
The last years of his life, when he was a recluse in his property in Douchy (Loiret), also made headlines. In the summer of 2023, his children accused his companion Hiromi Rollin, who claimed to be his long-time partner, of abuse of weakness and expelled her from Douchy. Before tearing each other apart, through the media and in court, over the state of health of their father, who was finally placed under reinforced guardianship in April 2024.
“A hero must always know how to die,” the actor declared to World in 2018. “I loved dying because it’s a full stop.”