R.I.P. Alain Delon, French superstar of Le Samouraï

Alain Delon, the striking French leading man known for his uncommonly beautiful, coldly calculating villains in Le Samouraï and Purple Noon, has died. As confirmed by his family to France’s AFP news agency, Delon died Sunday after years of health complications stemming from a 2019 stroke. He was 88.

An icon of French cinema, Delon spent a remarkable 60 years on screen, alluring and evading the cameras of some of the world’s greatest filmmakers. His mysterious grace, angelic face, and detached sorrow made him a contradictory leading man, one difficult to pin down and understand. “Mr. Klein or Rocco, The Leopard or The Samurai, Alain Delon has played legendary roles and made the world dream. Lending his unforgettable face to shake up our lives,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Instagram. “Melancholic, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: a French monument.”

Born, seemingly, into the movie business in 1935, his parents were a projectionist and theater usher, but he wouldn’t spend much time with them. Following his parents’ divorce and the outbreak of World War II, the young Delon found himself in foster homes and was expelled from multiple schools by age 13. He joined the French Navy at 17 and celebrated his 20th birthday in a prison cell for stealing a jeep.

“La solitude?” He said of his childhood. “She comes from the tears of early childhood. I’ve been doing it forever. It’s part of my life, I live well with it, I need it.”

Though he was charting a course for the life of crime he would ultimately live on screen, Delon found acting in the mid-‘50s, landing a role in Yves Allégret’s ‌Quand la femme s’en mêle. Despite having no training, Delon immediately intrigued producers, including David O. Selznick. He was then cast in a comedy by Allégret’s brother, Marc, Sois belle et taie-toi, and the hit 1959 French comedy Women Are Weak. By the beginning of the ‘60s, he was on the cusp of international stardom, playing the first screen Tom Ripely in René Clement’s Patricia Highsmith adaptation, Purple Noon.

Delon broke into the mainstream via his first collaboration with Luchino Visconti, Rocco And his Brothers. Playing the titular boxer Rocco, Delon led the movie to international success. His upward trajectory continued in the first half of the decade, starring opposite Brigitte Bardotin in Famous Love Affairs and leading 1962’s L’Eclisse, the final installment in Michelangelo Antonioni’s trilogy of films that includes La notte and L’avventura. With Jean Gabin’s Any Number Can Win, he further solidified his ability to play uncomfortably cool criminals with another disciplined and crafty crook, cooking up one last score. By the mid-‘60s, Delon reunited with Visconti for The Leopard, an epic costume drama starring Burt Lancaster. The film won the Palm d’Or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and became one of the top French films of the year.

By 1964’s end, Delon had left France for Hollywood. Working for MGM, Columbia, and Universal, he starred in films with Shirley MacLaine, Ann-Margret, and Dean Martin. Still, he failed to make a strong foothold in the U.S. He returned to France, where he got back to work revolutionizing crime movies. Under the direction of Jean-Pierre Melville, Delon epitomized and perfected the supernaturally controlled assassin in Le Samuraï, an archetype he’d carry over to Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge. Delon’s relationship with Melville and Antonioni made the actor a central figure of the French New Wave and its signature leading man, along with Jean-Paul Belmondo. Ironically, however, he wouldn’t work with Jean-Luc Godard until 1990’s Nouvelle Vague.

While Delon got a taste for producing in the ‘60s, he would produce nearly all his films from 1969 onward. He starred opposite Belmondo in Borsalino, a hit in Europe that spawned a sequel, 1974’s Borsalino & Co., but failed to connect in America. This was essentially the case with Delon’s ‘70s as he stumbled attempting to make an impression with the English-speaking public, starring in Red Sun with Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune, and 1973’s Scorpio, where he reteamed with Lancaster. During this time, Delon leaned on his fame and notoriety from crime and action films, starring as the titular masked avenger in Zorro and a third Melville collaboration, Un flic. However, he received his first César nomination for Mr. Klein, a Holocaust drama about a Parisian art dealer mistaken for a Jewish man.

He continued working throughout the century. He won his first and only César Award in 1985 for Our History, in which Delon plays an alcoholic attempting to find a woman with whom he shared a one-night, and starred in an adaptation of Marcel Proust’s Swann In Love. Delon’s final significant film role would come in 1998, when he more or less retired from acting.

Delon was no stranger to controversy. In 1968, an investigation into the murder of his bodyguard, whose body had been found in a dump near the actor’s Paris home, led to an investigation into alleged sex parties involving Delon and French politicians. Later in life, he expressed support for France’s far-right political party National Front. When Cannes announced they would present Delon with the 2019 Honorary Golden Palm, outrage followed, with critics citing Delon’s past of racist and sexist remarks. “We are not going to give Alain Delon the Nobel Peace Prize,” Cannes head Thierry Fremaux said at the time. “We’re giving him a Palme d’Or for his career as an actor.” After suffering a stroke in 2019, Delon’s health began to deteriorate.

Delon was a savvy businessman, licensing various products, including the sunglasses Chow Yun-fat wore in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow. He’s also one of the few actors with a brand of cigarettes named after him.

Delon and his relationships were long the subject of tabloid fodder. He was married to his only wife, Nathalie Barthélémy, from 1964 to 1969 but shared lengthy relationships with co-star Romy Schneider, actor Mireille Darc, and model Rosalie van Breeman.

Delon is survived by his sons, Anthony and Alain-Fabian, and daughter Anouchka. He denied paternity of Christian Aaron Päffgen, the son of singer Nico, who died in 2023.