Alain Delon, the smoldering, award-winning iconic French actor died at his home in the Loire Valley on Saturday. He was 88.
During the 1960s and ‘70s, he was one of the most sought after movie stars by acclaimed filmmakers. In Europe, Delon was known for his roles in crime dramas, with roles as a cop killer, an assassin, a murderer on the lam. But, he was also widely seen in other roles and genres.
The cinema legend starred as a wartime German art dealer, grappling with being mistaken for a Jewish man with the same name, in the 1976 French best picture winner, Mr. Klein.
Alain Delon on the set of “Mélodie En Sous-Sol” in 1962.
Reporters Associes/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
And, even after his heyday, Delon won the best actor César, France’s Oscar equivalent, for his 1984 performance in Bertrand Blier’s Notre Histoire.
In a statement to the AFP, Brigitte Bardot said Delon “represented the best of France’s ‘prestige cinema’… An ambassador of elegance, talent, beauty. I lose a friend, an alter ego, a partner.”
President Emmanuel Macron honored the late movie star on social media, writing in an Instagram post, “Wistful, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: a French monument.”
Alain Delon poses before receiving his honorary Palme d’Or Award at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival in 2019.
Eric Gaillard/REUTERS
American cinephiles and film critics, however, often focused on Delon’s devilish handsomeness, which was part of the actor’s enduring appeal. His beauty, Manohla Dargis of The New Times said in April, “has long inspired paroxysms of rapture.”
Despite his sex appeal, the silver screen star was “bored” by scenes of intimacy. “I prefer to fight,” Delon told reporters in 1965.
“I prefer to make love at home,” he added five years later.
Delon’s life also featured much turmoil and controversy. The BBC reported how his surviving children “have been laying bare their mutual grievances before the media in a series of insults, accusations, lawsuits and secret recordings,” including disagreements over his medical treatment, following his stroke in 2019.
The Cannes Film Festival awarded Delon an honorary Palme d’Or in 2019, despite criticism he faced criticism over past homophobic and misogynistic statements, and his support of the far right.
