Actor had admitted to slapping a woman and was criticised by feminists for a Cannes lifetime award in 2019
Actor Alain Delon – who has died Sunday aged 88 – was France’s greatest screen seducer. To some he was the sexiest man of the 20th century who played the impeccably tailored, ice-cold killers popularised by 1960s New Wave films to perfection.
To others, the man who often referred to himself in the third person and admitted to having slapped a woman, was an egotistical chauvinist, with feminists appalled by the lifetime achievement award the Cannes film festival gave him in 2019.
His millions of fans, from France to Japan – where Delon was adored as an idol of male beauty – were prepared to overlook his failings.
The whiff of sulphur and his angelic face also proved an irresistible combination to a long line of glamorous actresses who fell for him.
In a note to Delon on his 80th birthday, one of his oldest friends, fellow 1960s icon Brigitte Bardot, called him “an eagle with two heads… the best and the worst.”
Delon’s legend was launched in 1960, playing pretty boy killers and mysterious schemers in “Purple Noon” – later remade as “The Talented Mr Ripley” – and Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard”.
He then set the template for one of Hollywood’s favourite tropes – the mysterious, cerebral hitman – with his staggering performance as the silent killer in Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samurai” (1967).
Directors from Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino to Hong Kong’s John Woo all acknowledge a debt to the inner life Delon gave his stylish killer.
Angel and demon
And then there were the affairs. Many ended in heartbreak and tragedy, including in the case of his long and stormy relationship with the German actress Romy Schneider with whom he starred in “The Swimming Pool” (1969).
“The love of my life” – as Delon repeatedly called her – was found dead at her home at the age of 43, less than a year after her son was killed in a freak accident, impaled on a railing. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest.
While living his “great passion” with Schneider, Delon reportedly fathered a son with her compatriot, the Velvet Underground singer Nico.
He always denied the child was his, yet Delon’s mother brought up the boy, Ari Boulogne, who bore a striking resemblance to Delon and insisted he was his son until his death in 2023, aged 60, from a heroin overdose.
“I was programmed for success, not happiness. The two don’t go together,” said Delon, who claimed to have always defined himself through women.
“It’s in them, through the look in the eyes of my first wife, Nathalie, from Romy, (actress and longtime partner) Mireille (Darc), or the mother of my children (Rosalie van Breemen), that I drew the motivation to be who I am,” he said.
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