PARIS, Aug 18 — Actor Alain Delon — who has died Sunday aged 88 — was France's greatest screen seducer. To some he was the sexiest man of the 20th century who played the impeccably tailored, ice-cold killers popularised by 1960s New Wave films to perfection. To others, the man who often referred to himself in the third person and admitted to having slapped a woman, was an egotistical chauvinist, with feminists appalled by the lifetime achievement award the Cannes film festival gave him in 2019.
His millions of fans, from France to Japan — where Delon was adored as an idol of male beauty — were prepared to overlook his failings. The whiff of sulphur and his angelic face also proved an irresistible combination to a long line of glamorous actresses who fell for him. In a note to Delon on his 80th birthday, one of his oldest friends, fellow 1960s icon Brigitte Bardot, called him “an eagle with two heads.
.. the best and the worst.
” Delon's legend was launched in 1960, playing pretty boy killers and mysterious schemers in Purple Noon — later remade as The Talented Mr Ripley — and Luchino Visconti's The Leopard . He then set the template for one of Hollywood's favourite tropes — the mysterious, cerebral hitman — with his staggering performance as the silent killer in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samurai (1967). Directors from Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino to Hong Kong's John Woo all acknowledge a debt to the inner life Delon gave his stylish killer.
Angel .