La Piscine Star was 88

Photo: ALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Images

Alain Delon, star of Le Samourai, La Pool, And The leopard, has died. He was 88 years old. His children said in a statement to French news agency AFP that he died on Sunday surrounded by his children and his beloved dog Loubo. According to CNN, Delon had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2019. “Melancholic, popular, mysterious, he was more than a star: a French monument,” French President Emmanuel Macron said of Delon, one of the last remnants of French Nouvelle Vague cinema.

Born in 1935, Delon began doing odd jobs in Paris after serving in the French Navy. He was discovered by actress Brigitte Auber, who introduced him to the stars of international cinema at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. “I met a girl I liked and who loved me,” he said at a master class in Cannes in 2019. “I absorbed everything, walked the red carpet, but even then I felt at home… not least, and I say this without presumption, because it was made clear to me that I was not bad looking.”

He got his first supporting role in When the woman goes into battle, through an affair with the director's wife. From then on, he got regular work – including Christine, where he met Romy Schneider. The couple stayed together for 5 years, but remained creatively connected even years later. In the French press they were known as “the terrible lovers” (The Terrible Lovers), for their stormy relationship. After the separation, Delon and Schneider played together in The swimming pool in 1969. In this film, he met Mirelle Darc. They were together until 1982. Delon also had romantic relationships with Lana Wood, Ann-Margret, Marisa Mell and others. He had an affair with Nico in 1961. Nico had a son, Ari, in 1962, but Delon never acknowledged the child's paternity. Ari was raised by Nico and then adopted by Delon's mother.

Delon's later years were marked by a bitter dispute between his children over his care. He was also criticized for his far-right political views, anti-Semitism and attitudes toward women. When Delon received an honorary Palme d'Or in 2019, the French feminist organization Osez Le Feminisme shared: diversity “Cannes is sending a negative message to women and victims of violence by honoring Delon even though he admitted to slapping women.”

Delon played the deadly conman Tom Ripley in Full sun, worked with Luchino Visconti on Rocco and his brothers And The Leopardand most successfully with Jean-Pierre Melville. Delon played the leading role in Melville's Le Samouraï, Le Cercle Rouge, And A Flic before Melville died of a heart attack in 1973. In 1990 he finally worked with Jean-Luc Goddard on New Wave, a metatextual history of the film.