Alain Delon

Born on November 8, 1935 in Sceaux (Hauts-de-Seine), Alain Delon comes from a broken home – his parents separated when he was only four years old – which is why he had a tough childhood. He was a marginal and lonely child, always getting into trouble, who was expelled from several schools. At the age of 16 he enlists in the army, which is why he ended up serving in the paratroopers corps during the Indochina war. When he graduated, he worked in various occupations, such as doorman, salesman or waiter, until 1957, when he decided to visit the Cannes Film Festival, invited by his great friend Jean-Claude Brialy., who was beginning to make a career as an actor, with supporting roles. He introduced him to important characters in the film world and directors, who did not go unnoticed by Delon’s enormous potential. She was immediately offered his first contract, to play a prominent supporting role in Quand la femme s’en mêle , an unknown drama by Yves Allégret .

Delon made it to the cinema and was immediately successful, because after another brief role in A Dangerous Blonde – where he met Jean-Paul Belmondo for the first time , the other great French filmmaker – he was offered his first leading role, in Amours , by Pierre Gaspard- Huit . This passionate love story became quite an event, not only for its success at the box office, but for extra-cinematographic reasons, as Delon really fell in love with the female lead, the mythical Romy Schneider ., whom he considers “the great love of his life”, as he told a journalist after the death of the actress. Despite everything, it seems that the frivolous actor did not realize this small detail at the time, because after an intense romance that monopolized most of the covers of the heart press at the time, Delon ignored Schneider’s pleas, which she wanted to regularize the situation, and ended up abandoning her, leaving her plunged into an intense depression, and causing her to have to be treated with painkillers. It is not explained why, despite everything, the adorable protagonist of Sissy empress maintained the friendship with Delon throughout her life.

With Schneider at his side, Delon entered his heyday. The actress supports him with a very brief appearance in the first sequence of René Clement’s In Full Sun , where Delon plays Tom Ripley, the charismatic assassin created by Patricia Highsmith . Next, Delon and Schneider were directed by Luchino Visconti in his production of the play ‘Too Bad She’s a Whore’ by John Ford, the Elizabethan playwright, not the brilliant filmmaker. The play was a huge success and Visconti decided to trust Delon again to turn him into the kind and innocent Rocco, into Rocco and his brothers, one of the director’s key titles, which reflected the exodus from the countryside to the city, the great demographic phenomenon of the time. Visconti was so satisfied with his work that he turned to him again in another of his great works, The Leopard , Palme d’Or at Cannes, in 1963.

Another relevant Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni , trusts Delon to play a stockbroker in The Eclipse . He tried the adventure of Hollywood, with titles like Texas , together with Dean Martin , but there he never confirmed his success. Despite his international experiences, the actor prefers to focus on French cinema, with titles such as Great Play on the Côte d’Azur -a classic of crime films with Jean Gabin- , The Black Tulip , The Pool -again with Romy Schneider-, ¿ Is Paris burning? or The Silence of a Man , by Jean-Pierre Melville, emblematic title of French film noir. Delon starred in that film with Nathalie Canovas, a Moroccan photographer with whom he had just married, and who used her married name, Nathalie Delon as an actress . Shortly after the shooting, the first child of the couple was born, Anthony, who follows as an actor in the footsteps of his father. After divorcing Nathalie, Delon would later have two other children, Anouchka and Alain, with another partner, Rosalie van Breemen, and another son, Christian Aaron Boulogne, with Nico, a German model born in Spain. “I’m very good at doing three things: my job, stupid things and the kids,” Delon said.

After the success of The Clan of the Sicilians , in which he starred alongside Jean Gabin, Delon is concentrating on producing titles like Borsalino , which paired him with an old partner, the aforementioned Jean-Paul Belmondo. Delon also produced and launched Joseph Losey ‘s The Other Mr. Klein , where he gives one of the best performances of him, as a hedonistic individual who preys on persecuted Jews during the Nazi occupation of France.

Delon came to star in Airport 79 , the European installment of the famous catastrophic saga, in which a Concorde suffered an attack. Next, he tried his luck as a director with In the Skin of a Policeman , The Clash and Le Battan , which did not have much impact. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he remained quite active on theatre, television and film, with irregular films, usually less successful than those of previous decades. He wins the Cesar for Best Actor for Our Story , by Bertrand Blier , who also directed him in The Protagonists , where the best was his monologue. The comedy One of twounites him again with Belmondo. Disenchanted with the low-interest projects that were offered to him, at the turn of the millennium he abandoned cinema almost completely –not so theater and television– although he made an exception to play Julius Caesar, in Asterix and the Olympic Games .