He was hailed as the most seductive man in cinema and was, for decades, France’s most recognised male export.
Alain Delon, whose death was announced on Sunday, became a symbol of French masculinity, and his personal life often mirrored the drama of his films.
During his incredible career that spanned six decades, he was rumored to have slept with some of the most beautiful and famous women in the world of his time.
He is said to have had an affair with Jane Fonda while filming the 1964 film Joy House, and was also romantically linked to Swedish-American actress and singer Ann-Margret and Bond girl Lana Wood, Natalie Wood’s younger sister.
But one of his earliest and most significant relationships was with German actress Romy Schneider, whom he described as “the love of my life” after her death in 1982.
Alain Delon’s love life was frequently in the news, from sex parties to family disputes.
The film legend, whose death was announced on Sunday, enjoyed a career spanning six decades in which he is believed to have bedded some of the most beautiful and celebrated women in the world of his time.
Alain pictured with German actress Romy Schneider, whom he later described as the “love of his life”.
The couple met at a Paris airport in 1958 and went on to star in Pierre Gaspard-Huit’s romantic drama Liebelei before falling in love on the set of Christine.
Romy then left West Germany and joined Alain in Paris before announcing their engagement a year later.
The relationship lasted five years, during which time they became the golden couple of French cinema.
However, rumours soon began to circulate that Alain was cheating on his fiancée with German singer-songwriter Nico.
After a one-night stand in New York in 1961, Nico claimed she was expecting his child, who was born in August of the following year.
Despite the striking resemblance between the two, the French heartthrob has always denied being the girl’s father.
Then in 1963, Romy received a break-up letter from Alain and the couple separated.
Curiously, the letter made Romy fall in love when Alain declared his love for her while saying goodbye to her.
She wrote: ‘My little doll, I see you again and again. I want to take my eyes to see that you have never been more beautiful and calmer than that. Wait, I’m here. Today, for the first time, I learned a German word, with you.
I love you! I love you. I love you, my little doll.’
The following year, the actor became engaged to French model, actress and director Nathalie Delon, who was pregnant at the time.
The couple met in 1958 and became known as the golden couple of French cinema.
Alain and actress Jane Fonda had an affair while filming the 1964 movie Joy House.
After his marriage to Romy broke up, Alain married actress and director Nathalie Delon in 1964.
Alain and Nathalie had a son named Anthony in 1965.
They married in 1994, but she soon discovered that, despite the birth of their son Anthony in 1965, Alain was apparently incapable of being faithful.
That same year he had a romance with the singer Dalida, former Miss Egypt.
Alain was also said to take his girlfriends to orgies organised by his close friend and former bodyguard Stevan Markovic.
This led to the scandal of 1968, when Markovic’s body was found dumped in a Parisian garbage container.
His marriage to Nathalie ended in 1969 after he met French model and actress Mireille Darc.
He managed to persuade her and another actress named Maddly Bamy to join him in a ménage à trois to decide who he loved more.
The actor eventually chose Darc, with whom he would have his longest relationship, until the early 1980s.
Despite declaring that the model was “everything I am” they eventually decided to end their marriage as she was unable to have children due to a medical condition which meant she might not survive a pregnancy.
Housewife or mistress? Hiromi Rollin sparked a family feud after she claimed she had enjoyed an intimate relationship with Delon since the late 1980s, but her children insisted she was merely a paid domestic worker.
French actor Alain Delon and his daughter Anouchka pose upon arrival at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, southern France, on May 24, 2007 for the closing ceremony of the 60th Cannes Film Festival.
Alain had two more children, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, with Rosalie van Breemen, a Dutch model he met on the set of a music video in 1987.
Although the reason for their 2002 split was never revealed, Alain-Fabien claimed that his father had abused him, his older half-brother and his mother in 2012.
She claimed that her father had broken Rosalie’s nose twice and fractured eight of her ribs.
In response, Alain said that his son would tell anything to the newspapers in exchange for money, but then admitted that he had He slapped Rosalie as well as other women in his life.
Despite retiring from acting in 1997, her private life continued to make headlines, especially when Ari Boulogne, the man her former lover Nico claimed was his son, died last year from a heroin overdose.
In 2023, his three other children filed a complaint against his personal assistant Hiromi Rollin, accusing her of harassment and taking advantage of the increasingly fragile situation.
Alain with Shirley MacLaine in the yellow Rolls Royce, 1964
This photograph taken on August 21, 1963 in Nice shows French actor Alain Delon (left) and British actress Dawn Addams during the filming of ‘The Black Tulip’ (La Tulipe noire).
French actor Alain Delon poses on April 18, 1988 aboard an Alphajet of the Patrouille de France of the French Air Force in Salon-de-Provence
Alain Delon, at his home in Paris, with his wife Nathalie (Francine Canovas) and his son Anthony Delon in 1964
They claimed Rollin had pressured the increasingly frail star into marrying her and handing over his £250million fortune.
They eventually succeeded in evicting Rollin from his rural estate south of Paris.
Alain’s death, aged 88, was announced on Sunday morning in a statement from the actor’s children.
“He passed away peacefully at his home in Douchy. His family asks that their privacy be respected at this extremely painful time of mourning,” they wrote.
French President Emmanuel Macron also paid tribute to Delon, calling him not only a legendary actor but a “monument.”
Delon’s sexual interests were also rumored to be not limited to women, according to Austrian actor Helmut Berger, a darling of European cinema who was no stranger to sexual ambiguity.
Berger, who was simultaneously involved with model Marisa Berenson and acclaimed Italian director Luchino Visconti, claimed that Delon had attempted to court Visconti in an effort to boost his career.
Given that Delon had already starred in Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and The Leopard (1963) when Berger came on the scene, this might seem rather implausible.
However, Delon himself was unfazed when asked by a journalist for his reaction to people suggesting “very, very strongly, that you have homosexual tastes”.
“And what’s wrong with that?” he replied. “Would I be guilty of anything? If I like it, I’ll do it. The only important thing is to love.”
Born in Paris in 1935, he was the only child of film director Fabien Delon and his wife Edith, who divorced when he was just four and sent him to live with foster parents while each sought new relationships.
In a 2015 documentary, she recalled the “tears of my childhood.”
“Loneliness is part of my life,” he says. “I live well with it. I need it.”
When his adoptive mother and father died, his parents sent him to Catholic boarding schools, where he was expelled six times due to his disruptive behavior.
At 14, he returned to live with his mother and her new husband, a butcher who trained him in the art of charcuterie, before joining the navy at 17, serving in the Indochina War, as Vietnam was known before France lost control of the colony in 1954.
By then Delon had already been expelled from the navy for stealing a jeep. He initially lived in the Parisian red-light district of Pigalle, where he worked as a waiter and associated with prostitutes and gangsters, but then his looks earned him his first major role, in the 1958 film Christine, where he met Romy Schneider.
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