Alain Delon

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon (French: [alɛ̃ dəlɔ̃]; 8 November 1935 – 18 August 2024) was a French actor and producer.

Acknowledged as a cultural and cinematic leading man of the 20th century, Delon emerged as one of the foremost European actors of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and became an international sex symbol. His style, looks, and roles made him an icon of cinema worldwide and earned him enduring popularity. Delon achieved critical acclaim for his roles in films such as Women Are Weak (1959), Purple Noon (1960), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), L'Eclisse (1962), The Leopard (1963), Le Samouraï (1967), The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968), La Piscine (1969), Le Cercle Rouge (1970), Un flic (1972), and Monsieur Klein (1976). Over the course of his career, Delon worked with many directors, including Luchino Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Louis Malle.

Delon received many film and entertainment awards throughout his career. In 1985, he won the César Award for Best Actor for his performance in Notre histoire (1984). In 1991, he became a member of France's Legion of Honour. At the 45th Berlin International Film Festival, he won the Honorary Golden Bear. At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, he received the Honorary Palme d'Or.

As a singer, Delon recorded the popular duet "Paroles, paroles" (1973) with Dalida. He acquired Swiss citizenship in 1999.

Family

The Delons are originally from Saint-Vincent-Lespinasse, in Tarn-et-Garonne. Their known genealogy goes back to Jean Delon, born in the fifteenth century.

Delon's paternal great-grandfather, Fabien Delon (Saint-Vincent-Lespinasse, 28 December 1829 - Figeac (Lot), 12 December 1909), a civil engineer, was decorated with the Legion of Honour in 1892. 

His paternal grandmother, Marie-Antoinette Evangelista (born in 1867 in Prunelli-di-Fiumorbo), was Corsican. On 3 December 1888 she married Delon's paternal grandfather, Jean-Marcel Delon (Figeac, 4 November 1856 – 1926), then a tax collector in Gap, who was appointed in Corsica in 1886. The couple had two children together, a son François Fabien Delon and a daughter Jeanne Lucidora Adele Delon.

Delon's maternal grandfather, Alfred Louis Arnold (1876–1959), was born in Paris and was a rider of the French army, gendarme. His parents were Just Arnold, born in 1847 in Bürglen, Uri, a shoemaker by trade, and Marie-Adéle Lienemann, born in 1849, a cook. He married Maria Minard (1881–1913), a model for Jeanne Lanvin. The couple had two children: a daughter, Édith Marie Suzanne Arnold, and a son, Henri Arnold.

Personal life

On 20 March 1959, Delon was engaged to actress Romy Schneider, whom he met when they co-starred in the film Christine (1958). 

After their first film together, the couple of Alain Delon and Romy Schneider became iconic. Schneider, already a highly acclaimed star, and Delon, a rising talent, were affectionately nicknamed "les amants magnifiques" (the magnificent lovers), "Les fiancés éternels" (eternal fiancés), and "les amants terribles" (the terrible lovers) due to their passionate and tumultuous relationship, which was the subject of intense media scrutiny, with paparazzi relentlessly pursuing them. Romy's family remained opposed to their union, adding further complexities to their romance. In 1964, Delon and Schneider broke up. Their love story continued to captivate audiences and cemented their status as one of the most beautiful couples in cinema history. In 2018, Delon confessed that Romy Schneider was the love of his life. In 2009, he admitted his regret for not marrying her.

In 1961, he had an affair with German actress, singer and model Nico. And in 1962, Nico gave birth to a son, Christian Aaron Boulogne (Ari Päffgen) "Ari", but Delon never recognized the child as his. Ari was raised mostly by Delon's parents. In 2001 and 2019, Boulogne attempted to sue Delon for legal recognition of paternity but without success.

In 1963, Delon met young divorcée Francine Canovas, a model known professionally as Nathalie Barthélémy. 

He was also involved in an affair with Marisa Mell both before and after publicly announcing his engagement to Nathalie Barthélemy during a press conference. This liaison continued even after his marriage in 1964 and persisted into 1965. On 13 August 1964, he married Nathalie Barthélemy due to her pregnancy, which became publicly known and thereafter she took the name Nathalie Delon. Their son Anthony Delon, her second child, was born on 30 September 1964. Nathalie later revealed that Delon's love for Romy Schneider remained a constant presence in their relationship, with Alain often displaying a deep sadness indicative that his heart still belonged to Romy.

 In 1964-1965, Delon's relationships also included Ann-Margret and Lana Wood. In 1967, Alain Delon filed for divorce. The couple divorced on 14 February 1969.

In the mid-1960s, Delon had a short relationship with Dalida. The two had been friends since first meeting in Paris in 1955, where they were neighbors in the same building on the Champs-Élysées.

In August 1968, during the shooting of the film La Piscine, Delon met French actress Mireille Darc and asked her to appear with him in a movie. They started a relationship that lasted until 1982. He later had short relationships with actresses Anne Parillaud and Lana Wood, as well as Catherine Bleynie, ex-wife of Didier Pironi.

Delon was in a short relationship with Guadeloupe-born dancer and actress Maddly Bamy. He met Bamy on the set of La Piscine, in which Bamy had a small role. As Delon was also Mireille Darc's partner at the time, he shared his life with two women. Bamy ended their relationship in 1971, and subsequently became Jacques Brel's last companion. Their love triangle served as an inspiration to the 1969 film The Love Mates, in which Delon and Darc starred. Darc wrote the film's screenplay under her real name, Mireille Aigroz.

In 1987, Delon met Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen on the set of the music video for his song "Comme au cinéma" and started a relationship. They had two children: Anouchka Delon (25 November 1990) and Alain-Fabien Delon (18 March 1994). The relationship ended in 2001

Early life

Childhood and education: 1935–1952

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon was born at 99 Houdan Street on 8 November 1935 in Sceaux, a wealthy suburb of Paris in the department of Seine (now Hauts-de-Seine). Son of François Fabien Delon (Craponne-sur-Arzon, 12 March 1904 – 1977), a projectionist and later the director of the cinema Le Régina in Bourg-la-Reine, and Édith Marie Suzanne Arnold (1911–1995), an assistant employed in a pharmacy and a theater usher at the cinema, he was born into a petit-bourgeois family.

In 1939, Delon was four years old when his parents divorced. Both of his parents remarried, as a result he had two half brothers and an adopted sister on his father's side, and two half siblings on his mother's side. He was then entrusted to a foster family, which would remain for him a childhood wound that never healed. The father of this family was a prison guard in Fresnes Prison, Val-de-Marne. Delon, who lived next door, heard the salvo that executed the wartime collaborator Pierre Laval in the prison courtyard in 1945, the details of which he was told. While living with the foster family, Delon became passionate about bicycle racing and had hoped to become a bicycle racer like Fausto Coppi.

The foster parents later died and Delon was sent back to his family and his parents took shared custody of him. Growing up, he would spend time living with his father and his second family in L'Haÿ-les-Roses and his mother and her second family in Bourg-la-Reine. His parents then placed him in the Catholic boarding school of Saint-Nicolas d'Igny (Essonne), where he spent all his youth with one of his best friends, Gérard Salomé. While staying at Saint-Nicolas, his passion for music developed and he joined the school choir, and was also chosen to sing as a soloist. He was also congratulated by Cardinal Roncalli, who later went on to become Pope John XXIII.

However due to the lack of attention his parents were giving him, Delon became unruly, constantly misbehaving in the classroom and getting into fights with other children. He was later expelled from the school because of his bad behavior. The priests then recommended that he be sent to Saint Gabriel de Bagneaux. During his four years there, Delon would constantly misbehave and would be disrespectful to his teachers. He then stole the director’s motorcycle which resulted in him getting expelled again. Delon was expelled from a few more schools until the age of 13, when he entered Saint Nicolas d'Igny Institute. While in school, he had the opportunity to perform the role of a thug in Le Rapt, a 22-second silent short film directed by Olivier Bourguignon, a friend of his father. At age 14, Delon decided he did not want to stay in the school and wished to leave France. He decided to run away to Chicago with his friend Daniel Salwadet who had an uncle living there. They left the school, determined to hitchhike to Bordeaux. When the pair arrived in Châtellerault a passerby took them to the local police station. Due to Delon's temper, he and his friend were put in jail and were sent back to their families. Because of his actions, Delon was expelled from the school. His parents then decided that studies were not for him and made Delon abandon them.

His mother, who had married Paul Boulogne, a butcher and delicatessen owner from Bourg-la-Reine, took him into the family home; however, Delon stated later that he never really found a place in that family and never felt safe there. Delon passed a CAP examination in charcuterie at the Au Jambon de Paris. For three years he worked at his stepfather's delicatessen, which had sixteen employees. But during those three years, Delon developed a very bad reputation in the community. He partied constantly and got into bar fights, and was also a member of a gang at one point.

**** 

Marisa Mell and Alain Delon were never known to be long-term romantic partners, but they were involved for a short period in the 1960s. Marisa Mell, an Austrian actress famous for her sultry beauty and work in European cinema, and Alain Delon, a French actor and international star, reportedly had a brief affair.

This brief relationship took place during a time when Delon was already a major star, known for his work in films like Le Samouraï (1967), and Mell was rising to fame, especially after her appearance in films like Danger: Diabolik (1968). Their involvement was part of Delon's reputation for being linked to many famous women during that period. However, it didn't develop into anything long-term or as high-profile as some of Delon's other relationships, such as with Romy Schneider or Nathalie Delon. 

While their romance was short-lived, it reflected the glamorous, often intersecting lives of European stars in the 1960s.