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The legendary French actor Alain Delon passed away at the age of 88 in Douchy, central France, their three children announced in a statement sent to AFP on Sunday.
“Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony and (their dog) Loubo announce with deep regret the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully at his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and family.” the statement says.
“The actor of ‘In full sun’ and ‘The silence of a man’ He has gone to meet (the Virgin) Mary among the stars so dear to him,” he added.
EThe actor died “very early in the middle of the night,” they said.
Little seen since the ninetiesAlain Delon hit the front pages of newspapers in the summer of 2023, when his three children presented a complaint against her lady-in-waiting, Hiromi Rollin, sometimes described as his partner, accusing her of taking advantage of his weakness.
His three sons then waged a fratricidal war through the media and the courts, on purpose the state of health of the actor, who suffered from lymphoma and suffered a stroke in 2019.
Delon never won an acting award at the Cannes Film Festival, which decided despite all the controversy award him a Palme d’Or for his career in 2019.
“It’s a bit of a posthumous tribute, but while he’s alive,” Delon said at the time.
EThe seductive power of a lone wolf
“I like to be loved as I love myself.” For this man who spoke of himself in the third person, everything he undertook could only be done in an excessive way.
A style that haunted him at the end of his life, between family disputes, contradictory statements and controversies about his career and women.
Gambler prince or indomitable ganster, Delon acted for several of the best directors of the seventh art and his power of attraction has perhaps only been matched in the history of cinema by Rudolph Valentino.
Others saw in him a French version of James Dean.
Was the ideal man of many women and the companion for a time of beauties such as Romy Schneider, Claudia Cardinale, Simone Signoret or Mireille Darc.
“It was in them, in the eyes of my first wife, Nathalie, and in those of Romy (Schneider), Mireille (Darc) or the mother of my children (Rosalie van Breemen), that I found the motivation to be what I have been, to do what I had to do,” said Delon.
AA meticulous actor in front of the camera, Alain Delon will go down in history for a magnetism comparable to that of Marilyn Monroe or Brigitte Bardot had over men.
““The only thing I needed was to play the role of Christ. Now it’s a bit late,” said this disciplined actor at the end of his career, who had the talent to obey the orders of the greatest.
THe worked in some 90 films, under the direction of Melville, Visconti, Antonioni, Losey, Godard and Malle.
Pproducer, director, businessman and art collector, he was a rebellious and arrogant seducer, who cultivated in real life the image that he radiated on the screen.
Time transformed the face and silvered the hair of the solitary beast. It accentuated his misanthropic pose from where he savored glory, before it ended up boring him because it restricted his freedom.
““I was programmed for success, not happiness. These are two incompatible things,” he once said.
BVisconti’s garlic wing
Born on November 8, 1935 in Sceaux, near Paris, Delon He had an unstable childhood after his parents’ divorcefollowed by four years of war in Indochina as a marine.
Back in Paris, he took on odd jobs in an area of the capital’s central market frequented by pimps, prostitutes, homosexuals and criminals.
“I have had many contacts with gangsterism, I even touched it with my fingers,” he confessed in 2021.. But “I always preferred police officers.”
Her strong elegance, blue eyes and “angel face” -one of her nicknames- They did not go unnoticed in the distinguished Parisian neighborhood from Saint-Germain-des-Près, which he began to frequent.
He cineasta Jean-Claude Brialy fell under that spell and invited him to the Cannes Film Festival.
In 1957, she made her screen debut in Yves Allégret’s “Quand la femme s’en mêle,” before becoming an interpreter for one of the greatest, Luchino Visconti.
The Italian director will be the true Pygmalion of the young actor, whose intelligence and potential he was able to detect and develop.
“Rocco and His Brothers and The Leopard were the high points of Delon’s career. In Italy, he starred in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Eclipse before composing memorable roles for Jean-Pierre Melville in The Red Circle and The Samurai.
In the theatre, he was seen in “Too bad it’s a p…”, staged by Visconti. co-star Her name was Romy Schneider and It was the beginning of a long relationship with the young actress Austrian.
Con “Borsalino”, from Jacques Deray, In 1974 he achieved one of the greatest triumphs of his career alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo, whom he said goodbye to, with emotion, on September 10, 2021, when the funeral of this other monster of French cinema was held.
Some filmmakers have successfully explored its more complex facets.
For Joseph Losey he was the enigmatic protagonist of “The Other Mr. Klein” (1976) and Volker Schloendorff made him Baron de Charlus, the elusive homosexual aristocrat of “A Love of Swann” (1984), adaptation of Proust’s work.
Delon diversified his activities: as a director, he shot “Por la piel de un Policía” (1980) and “Cerco de Muerte” (1983). He ventured into breeding racehorses and was passionate about boxing.
From this fascination with the murky and violent world of boxing evenings was born the relationship with The Argentine Carlos Monzonwith whom he organized several fights in France.
In 2002, after his separation from Rosaliedid not hide his depression, even evoking the idea of suicide.
In the following years His public appearances became less and less frequent, punctuated by statements that accentuated his isolation, in favour of the death penalty and the extreme right or against gay marriage.
““I don’t like the world today,” said this man, a father of three children.
