Alain Delon, the handsome French actor who starred in some of the best european films of the 60s and 70s, died at the age of 88.
“Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony and (your dog) Loubo They announce with great regret that their father passed away peacefully at his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” said a statement from the family released yesterday.
This sensitive news comes after the actor suffered severe health problemsincluding a stroke in 2019.
Recognized for its tense y stoic interpretations, Often portrayed as a seductive man, they were marked by sudden outbursts of violence and emotion, characteristic of French and Italian films of the post-war era. He was often nicknamed “the male Brigitte Bardot”.
Although he was an idol of movie theaters in Europa, Delon He never managed to establish himself as a star in Hollywood. He moved there in 1964, signed contracts with MGM and Columbia and made a total of six films, but he failed to break through to stardom and left in 1967 to soon star in crime films. The Sicilian Clan y Borsalinoboth box office hits in France.
With a hundred feature films to his credit, several dozen of which he also produced, Delon received few awards during his lifetime. He won the French César only once, for the romantic film Bertrand Blier of 1984; Our Historyin which he played an alcoholic who falls in love with a younger woman (Nathalie Baye). In 1995, he received an OHonorary Palme d’Or at the Berlinale and in 2019 an Honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes.
This last award was marked by controversy, with a petition of more than 25 thousand signatures protesting its “racism, homophobia and misogyny.”
At the time, Delon told the news agency Reuters that he was not against gay marriage but did not approve of “adoption by two people of the same sex” and added that “I have never harassed a woman in my life. They, however, harassed me a lot.”
“You don’t have to agree with me,” the actor told the audience through tears during the awards ceremony in Cannes. “But if there is one thing in this world that I am sure of, that I am truly proud of, it is my career.”
Delon was born on November 8, 1935 in Seals, a suburb south of Paris. His father, Fabien, ran a cinema in the neighbourhood and his mother, Édith, worked in a pharmacy.
After his parents divorced in 1939, he was sent to live with a foster family and then to a Catholic boarding school. He earned a professional degree and worked for a time in his stepfather’s butcher shop in the Parisian suburb of Bourg-la-Reine.
At the age of 17, he was called to the military service and joined the French Navy and was sent to Saigon to serve in the First Indochina War.
He later settled back in Paris in 1956, where he worked various jobs and frequented the clubs and cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where he met Jean-Claude Brialy, who starred in films of the New wave, and it was he who took Delon with him to Cannes that year, and his face caught the attention of David O. Selznick, for whom he did a screen test in Rome and the rest would be history.
Related
2024-08-21 17:16:32