Alain Delon, cinematic heartthrob and one of the most beloved French actors, has died

Actor Alain Delon has died. His icy good looks established him as an postwar international celebrity who enjoyed a long commercial film career in Europe. Delon starred in more than 80 movies over six decades, including such classics as Le Samouraï and The Leopard. He was 88.

An agent for one of Delon’s sons confirmed the death. His three children released a statement on Sunday to the news agency Agence France-Presse saying the actor had died peacefully at his home in Douchy, France.

Born in a wealthy Parisian suburb, Delon endured a tumultuous early life. His parents divorced when he was 4 years old. He spent his childhood shuffling between a foster family, various relatives and boarding schools, where he developed a reputation as a troublemaker and petty thief. At 17, Delon enlisted in the French navy, serving in what was then French Indochina for four years. After his service, he worked odd jobs, including as a waiter and a longshoreman, and started dating an actress — Brigitte Auber — who would be his entry into moviemaking.

Delon started getting attention as a screen starting in the late 1950s. One early role was as the lead in a French/Italian sex comedy called Faibles Femmes, or Women Are Weak.

“This young man, whom some genius press agent has helpfully tagged ‘the French James Dean,’ has long silky hair, high cheekbones and a loose-jointed, soigne air,” wrote New York Times critic Bosley Crowther in a dismissive 1959 review of the film. “He smiles come-hitherly and generally is condescending to the lovelies, who flip for him. He rides a motorcycle and affects the hauteur of a ‘cat.’”

Delon’s status as a cat-like global sex symbol was confirmed the next year in the psychological thriller Plein Soleil, or Purple Noon, directed by René Clément. It was the first film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. Clement’s camera swoons over Delon, who plays Ripley, as he glides through a seaside market in an impeccable white linen shirt. Even the famously cranky Patricia Highsmith adored his performance.

“This Ripley doesn’t promise happiness,” wrote critic Anthony Lane in a 2024 New Yorker article called “Can A Film Star Be Too Good-Looking?” It’s a filmic mash note to Delon. “Here is someone, evidently, from whom we ought to steer clear, yet we can’t get away from him. We can’t even look away.”

Purple Noon made Delon one of the highest-paid French actors of his era. He started his own production companies and branched out into singing, recording at least one hit, “Paroles, paroles” in 1973 with the singer Dalida, who was also a romantic interest.

Although he tried, and failed, to build a Hollywood career, Delon’s co-stars in European productions included Jane Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Charles Bronson, Yves Montand and Brigitte Bardot, as well as German star Romy Schneider, with whom he was romantically involved. Their highly publicized breakup in 1964 was one of the many scandals that would mark his off-screen life.

Those included the mysterious murder of his bodyguard in 1968, salacious rumors of exclusive sex parties, an unacknowledged child with the singer and model Nico, allegations of abuse from his other children and forays into far-right politics that many peers in the film industry found off-putting. Delon enjoyed a long friendship with National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose politics were openly racist and antisemitic.

Over the years, Delon was awarded an honorary Palme d’Or and a César Award for Best Actor. Although he was best known for playing handsome, amoral criminals, Delon showed range and artistic ambition on screen, especially as he aged.

In 1976’s Mr. Klein, a film he also produced, Delon starred as a self-absorbed gentile merchant mistaken for Jewish during World War II, and handed over to the Nazis by the Vichy regime. And in 1984’s Un Amour de Swann, based on a novel by Marcel Proust, he played a supporting role, as a depressive gay aristocrat, who helps Jeremy Irons’ main character find love.

Delon left behind an outsized, idiosyncratic cultural footprint. The band The Smiths used a still from L’Insoumis (The Unvanquished) featuring the actor’s brooding face as the cover for their 1986 album, The Queen Is Dead, and Madonna’s song “Beautiful Killer” is an homage to the actor. Director Quentin Tarantino credited Delon as an influence on his breakthrough film Reservoir Dogs.

“I could see Alain Delon in a black suit saying, ‘I’m Mr. Blonde,’” he told an interviewer, according to New York magazine.

In 1991, Delon was named a Chevalier of France’s Legion of Honor, later promoted to Officer. Much of his later work was in television and on stage, and his last screen credit was as himself in the 2019 French film Toute Ressemblance. That same year, after he suffered a stroke, his children began a long, public fight over his care. In early 2024, a French judge placed Delon under legal guardianship.

Edited for the web by Clare Lombardo. Produced for the web by Beth Novey.