Whatever happened to…

Words: JILL ECKERSLEY

Alain Delon

Once described as ‘the most beautiful man in the world’, the French actor, film maker and 1960s heart throb had a lot to live up to! After a troubled childhood – his parents divorced when he was very young and he lived with foster parents and was expelled from several schools – he eventually served in the French Navy for three years.

As an aspiring actor, he was ‘spotted’ by US director David O Selznick at the Cannes Film Festival in the mid-1950s, but decided he would prefer to work in the French film industry. Despite this, he perfected his English and worked in the USA and other countries, starring in films like The Leopard and Rocco and His Brothers, as well as making British women’s hearts flutter in the 1968 movie Girl on a Motorcycle co-starring Marianne Faithfull.

He says the love of his life was Vienna-born actress Romy Schneider, who sadly died in 1982. “We have to dare everything if we really love,” he has said. Delon was awarded the French Legion d’Honneur in 1991 for his services to the industry, and after the turn of the millennium concentrated on roles on the French stage and TV. In 2019 he won an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival and most recently he was seen on French TV interviewing Ukrainian President Zelensky. He is a citizen of both his native France and also Switzerland, where he lives.