French actor Alain Delon, who melted the hearts of millions of film fans whether playing a murderer, hoodlum or hitman in his postwar heyday, has died, French media reported on Sunday. He was 88. Delon had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2019, rarely leaving his estate in Douchy, in France’s Val de Loire region.
With striking blue eyes, Delon was sometimes referred to as the “French Frank Sinatra” for his handsome looks, a comparison Delon disliked. Unlike Sinatra, who always denied connections with the Mafia, Delon openly acknowledged his shady pals in the underworld. In a 1970 interview, opens new tab with the New York Times, Delon was asked about such acquaintances, one of whom was among the last “Godfathers” of the underworld in the Mediterranean port of Marseille.
“Most of them the gangsters I know ...
were my friends before I became an actor,” he said. “I don’t worry about what a friend does. Each is responsible for his own act.
It doesn’t matter what he does.” Delon shot to fame in two films by Italian director Luchino Visconti, “Rocco and His Brothers” in 1960 and “The Leopard” in 1963. He starred alongside venerable French elder Jean Gabin in Henri Verneuil’s 1963 film “Melodie en Sous-Sol” (“Any Number Can Win”) and was a major hit in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 “Le Samourai” (“The Godson”).
The role of a philosophical contract killer involved minimal dialogue and frequent solo scenes, and Delon shone.