French film star Alain Delon dies aged 88

Alain Delon, the star who dominated French cinema in the Sixties playing seductive, vulnerable killers in films such as Purple Noon and Le Samouraï, has died at the age of 88.
The death of the “last god” of the country’s golden age of cinema and its biggest international heartthrob of the era was greeted with an outpouring of tributes as the media ran special editions.
Delon’s children announced his death at his central France home on Sunday morning. The actor had retreated from public view for five years after a stroke in 2019 left him infirm.
• Alain Delon obituary
“Alain-Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as [Delon’s dog] Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” they said.
President Macron said on X that Delon had made the world dream and “touched all our lives” with his films.
He said: “Melancholic, popular, secret, he was more than a star. He was a French giant.”
The blue-eyed actor, once dubbed the most beautiful man in the world, had been in the news over the past two years because of a conflict with his three children, who took legal action to try to reduce the influence of his Japanese housekeeper and carer over his affairs. This year a court placed the actor under financial guardianship.
In 1960 Delon made his mark as the murderous anti-hero Tom Ripley in Plein Soleil (Purple Noon), an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr Ripley.
He broke through as a magnetic, handsome leading man in two films directed by Luchino Visconti — Rocco and His Brothers in 1960 and The Leopard in 1963. His role as a thoughtful hitman in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 Le Samouraï (The Godson), sealed his image as as an actor admired by men and adored by women.
Frequent television reruns have earned younger followings for Delon, notably in La Piscine, an erotic 1969 thriller set in a Riviera mansion and co-starring Romy Schneider, to whom he was engaged but never married.
Delon, who served as a marine in French Indochina in the 1950s when he was a teenager, courted controversy throughout his life with his links to the underworld, hard-right views and antiquated attitudes towards women.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the hard-right National Rally party, said: “The legend has gone. Alain Delon leaves us as orphans of the golden age of French cinema which he embodied so well. A little bit of France that we love has left with him”.
Brigitte Bardot, the biggest female star of the era and a fellow hard-right supporter, called Delon “the best and the worst — inaccessible and so close, at the same time, cold and burning”.
Paying tribute, Gilles Jacob, a former head of the Cannes film festival, called Delon “a majestic lion, an actor with a steel gaze who controlled everything except for his end”.
Jean-Marie Périer, a celebrated photographer from the Delon era, said: “He spent his life proving that he was more than just beautiful and took a lot of risks.”
Claudia Cardinale, 86, evoked Delon’s role as Prince Tancredi Falconeri in The Leopard, in which she starred with him. “The ball is over. Tancredi has gone to dance with the stars,” she said. “They are asking me for words, but the sadness is much too intense.”
Eric Ciotti, leader of the conservative Republicans party, said Delon would “remain for ever in the eyes of the world the French Man with a capital M. He was a sincere patriot and man of the right.”
Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister, said: “Thank you Alain Delon for this immense life of cinema.”
In March Delon’s 33-year-old daughter, Anouchka, claimed her father wanted to be left alone “to die in peace” amid an extraordinary public dispute between her and her two brothers.
Alain-Fabien, 30, and Anthony, 59, accused their sister of trying to manipulate the 88-year-old to capture an inheritance estimated at several hundred million euros. She denied this and said they were jealous because she had always been Delon’s favourite child.
Anthony’s mother is the late actress Nathalie Delon. Anouchka and Alain-Fabien were born from his relationship with Rosalie van Breemen, a Dutch model.
In an interview with France Inter, the state radio station, this year, Anouchka described the quarrel as “violent, absurd and abject” and said it had made her life “hell”. She added: “A myth is being destroyed, that of my father. It’s unfair and indecent.”
The three siblings united last summer when they took legal action to expel Hiromi Rollin, 66, Delon’s housekeeper, from Douchy, claiming that she was trying to take control of him to benefit from his fortune. She was ejected from the estate but prosecutors rejected their demand for charges to be brought against her.