Hailed as the most seductive man in cinema, he was France’s most recognisable male export for decades.
Alain Delon, whose death was announced on Sunday, became a symbol of French masculinity and his private life often reflected the drama in his films.
During his impressive six-decade career, he was rumored to have slept with some of the most beautiful and celebrated women in the world.
He is said to have had an affair with Jane Fonda during the filming of the 1964 film Joy House, and also had relationships with Swedish-American actress and singer Ann-Margret and Bond girl Lana Wood, the younger sister of Natalie Wood.
But one of his earliest and most important relationships was with the German actress Romy Schneider, whom he described after her death in 1982 as “the love of my life.”
Alain Delon’s love life has regularly made headlines, from sex parties to family feuds
The screen legend, whose death was announced on Sunday, enjoyed a career spanning six decades, during which he reportedly slept with some of the world’s most beautiful and celebrated women of his time.
Alain pictured with German actress Romy Schneider, whom he later described as the ‘love of his life’
The couple met in 1958 at a Paris airport and starred in Pierre Gaspard-Huit’s romantic drama Liebelei. They later fell in love on the set of Christine.
Romy left West Germany and went to live with Alain in Paris. A year later they announced their engagement.
The relationship lasted five years and during that time they became the golden couple of French cinema.
Rumors soon started circulating that Alain was cheating on his fiancée with German singer-songwriter Nico.
After a one-night stand in New York in 1961, Nico claimed he was pregnant with his child, who was born the following August.
Despite the striking resemblance between the two, the French heartthrob always denied being the child’s father.
In 1963, Romy received a farewell letter from Alain and the couple broke up.
Strangely enough, Romy liked the letter, while Alain declared his love for her and said goodbye to her.
He wrote: ‘My little doll, I see it again and again. I want to take my eyes to see that you have never been so beautiful and quiet. Wait a minute, I am here. Today I learned a German word for the first time, with you.
‘I love you! 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 during the filming of the 1964 film Joy House
After the failure of his marriage to Romy, Alain married actor 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 Alain was incapable of fidelity, despite the birth of their son Anthony in 1965.
That same year he had an affair with singer Dalida, a former Miss Egypt.
Alain is also said to have taken his girlfriends to orgies organised by his good friend and former bodyguard Stevan Markovic.
This led to the scandal in 1968, when Markovic’s body was found 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, Maddly Bamy, to join him in a ménage à trois to determine who he liked best.
The actor ultimately chose Darc, with whom he was together the longest, until the early 1980s.
Despite declaring that the model was “everything to me,” they eventually decided to end their marriage. She was unable to have children due to a medical condition and might not survive a pregnancy.
Housekeeper or mistress? Hiromi Rollin sparked a family row after claiming she had an intimate relationship with Delon since the late ’80s – but his children insisted she was just a paid housekeeper
French actor Alain Delon and his daughter Anouchka pose as they arrive at the Festival Palace in Cannes, southern France, on May 24, 2007, to attend the closing ceremony of the 60th Cannes Film Festival.
Alain later had two more children, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, with Rosalie van Breemen, a Dutch model he met on the set of a video clip in 1987.
Although the reason for their split in 2002 was never revealed, Alain-Fabien claimed in 2012 that his father abused him, his older half-brother and his mother.
He claimed that his father had broken Rosalie’s nose twice and fractured eight of her ribs.
In response, Alain said that his son would tell everything to newspapers in exchange for money, but later admitted that he beat both Rosalie and other women in his life.
Despite retiring from acting in 1997, his private life remained in the news, especially when Ari Boulogne, the man his former lover Nico claimed was his son, died of a heroin overdose last year.
In 2023, his three other children filed a complaint against his live-in assistant Hiromi Rollin, accusing her of intimidation and exploiting the increasingly weak children.
Alain with Shirley MacLaine in The Yellow Rolls Royce, 1964
This photo, 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 aboard an Alphajet of the French Air Force Patrouille de France in Salon-de-Provence on April 18, 1988
Alain Delon, at home in Paris, with his wife Nathalie (Francine Canovas) and his son Anthony Delon in 1964
They alleged that Rollin had pressured the increasingly struggling star into marrying her and handing over their £250million fortune.
Eventually they managed to have Rollin evicted from his estate south of Paris.
Alain’s death, at the age of 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 you respect his privacy, in this extremely painful moment of mourning,” they wrote.
French President Emmanuel Macron also paid tribute to Delon, calling him not only a legendary actor but also a “monument.”
It was also rumored that Delon’s sexual interests were not limited to women, according to Austrian actor Helmut Berger, a darling of European cinema who was himself no stranger to sexual ambiguity.
Berger, who was simultaneously in a relationship with both model Marisa Berenson and acclaimed Italian director Luchino Visconti, alleged that Delon had attempted to court Visconti to further his career.
Since Delon had already appeared in Visconti’s Rocco And His Brothers (1960) and The Leopard (1963) when Berger arrived on the scene, this seems rather unlikely.
Yet Delon himself remained calm when a reporter asked him to respond to people who were “very, very adamant that you have homosexual preferences.”
“What’s wrong if I did?” he replied. “Would I be guilty of anything? If I like it, I do it. The only important thing is to love.”
He was born in Paris in 1935, the only child of cinema manager Fabien Delon and his wife Edith. When he was four, they divorced and sent him to live with foster parents while they both pursued new relationships.
In a 2015 documentary, he spoke about the “tears of my youth.”
“Loneliness is a part of my life,” he said. “I live with it. I need it.”
When both his foster mother and father died, his parents sent him to Catholic boarding schools, where he was expelled six times for his disruptive behavior.
At 14, he moved back in with his mother and her new husband, a butcher who taught him the art of charcuterie. At 17, he joined the navy and served in the Indochina War, as Vietnam was known, until France lost control of the colony in 1954.
By then, Delon had been expelled from the Navy for stealing a jeep. He first lived in Paris’s Pigalle red-light district, working as a waiter and hanging out with prostitutes and gangsters, but his looks landed him his first major role, in the 1958 film Christine, where he met Romy Schneider.
