PARIS — Alain Delon, the internationally acclaimed French actor who played both villains and cops and stole hearts around the world, has died at the age of 88, French media reported.
With his attractive looks and gentle manner, the prolific actor managed to combine toughness with an appealing, vulnerable side, making him one of France’s most unforgettable leading men.
Delon also worked as a producer, appeared in plays and, in later years, in television films.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to “a French monument” on X.
“Alain Delon played legendary roles and made the world dream,” he wrote. “Melancholic, popular, mysterious, he was more than a star.”
Delon’s children announced the artist’s death on Sunday in a statement to French news agency Agence France-Presse, a common practice in France. Tributes to Delon immediately poured in on social media, and all of France’s leading media outlets covered his successful career extensively.
Earlier this year, his son Anthony said his father had been diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma, a type of cancer.
Last year, Delon’s fragile health was at the heart of a family dispute over his care, which led to bitter arguments between his three children reported in the media.
At the height of his career in the 1960s and 1970s, Delon was the target of some of the world’s best directors, from Luchino Visconti to Joseph Losey.
In his later years, Delon became disillusioned with the film industry, saying that money had destroyed the dream. “Money, commerce and television have destroyed the dream machine,” he wrote in a 2003 edition of the weekly newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur. “My cinema is dead. And so am I.”
However, he continued to work frequently and appeared in several television films well into his seventies.
Delon’s presence was unforgettable whether he was playing morally corrupt heroes or romantic leads. He rose to fame in 1960 with Plein Soleil, directed by Réne Clément, in which he played a murderer who tries to assume the identities of his victims.
He made several Italian films, most notably with Visconti in the 1961 film Rocco and His Brothers, in which Delon plays a self-sacrificing brother who tries to help his sibling. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
The Visconti film Le Guepard (The Leopard), starring Delon, won the Palme d’Or, the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1963. His other films included Clément’s Is Paris Burning?, with a screenplay by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola, Jacques Deray’s La Piscine (The Sinners) and, for a change, Losey’s The Assassination of Trotsky in 1972.
In 1968, Delon began producing films – 26 by 1990 – and maintained this rapid and confident dynamism throughout his life.
Delon’s self-confidence was evident in his statement to Femme in 1996: “I want to be loved as I love myself!” This reflected his charismatic screen persona.
Delon continued to captivate audiences for years to come – and was criticized for comments he considered outdated. In 2010, he appeared in “Un mari de trop” (“One Husband Too Many”) and returned to the stage in 2011 with “An Ordinary Day”, together with his daughter Anouchka.
He briefly headed the Miss France jury, but resigned in 2013 after disagreements arose over some controversial statements, including criticism of women, LGBTQIA+ rights and migrants. Despite these controversies, he received a Palme d’Honneur at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, a decision that sparked further debate.
The Brigitte Bardot Foundation, which is committed to animal welfare, paid tribute to “an extraordinary man, an unforgettable artist and a great animal lover” in a statement on social media. Delon was “a close friend” of French film legend Brigitte Bardot, “who is deeply saddened by his death,” the statement said. “We are losing a precious friend and a man with a big heart.”
French film producer Alain Terzian said Delon was “the last of the giants”.
“It’s a new chapter in the history of French cinema,” he told France Inter radio. Terzian, who produced several films directed by Delon, recalled: “Every time he appeared somewhere, there was a kind of almost mystical, quasi-religious respect. He was fascinating.”
Delon was born on November 8, 1935 in Sceaux, south of Paris. After his parents separated, he was placed with a foster family at the age of four. He then attended a Roman Catholic boarding school.
At the age of 17, Delon joined the navy and was sent to Indochina. Back in France in 1956, he worked in various odd jobs, from waiter to transporter at the Paris meat market, before turning to acting.
In 1964, Delon had a son, Anthony, with his then wife Nathalie Canovas, who played alongside him in Jean-Pierre Melville’s “The Samurai” in 1967. He had two more children, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, with his later partner Rosalie van Breemen, with whom he produced a song and a video clip in 1987. Many also believed that he was the father of Ari Boulogne, the son of the German model and singer Nico, although he never publicly acknowledged paternity.
“I’m very good at three things: my job, stupid things and children,” he said in an interview with L’Express in 1995.
Delon was involved in many different activities throughout his life, from building a stable for harness racing horses to developing perfumes for men and women, followed by watches, glasses and other accessories. He also collected paintings and sculptures.
In 1999, Delon announced the end of his acting career, but continued it and appeared in Bertrand Blier’s “Les Acteurs” (The Actors) that same year. He later appeared in several police series on television.
His good looks helped him. In August 2002, Delon told the weekly magazine L’Humanité Hebdo that without them he would no longer be in the business.
“You will never see me old and ugly,” he said, already approaching 70, “because I will go before then or I will die.”
But it wasn’t until 2019 that Delon summed up his feelings about the meaning of his life at a gala event in his honor at the Cannes Film Festival. “One thing I know for sure: if there is one thing I am truly proud of, it is my career.”
