[7][6][8] Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon was born in a house located at 99 Houdan Street on 8 November 1935 in Sceaux, a wealthy suburb of Paris in the department of Seine (now Hauts-de-Seine).

[16][17] Delon discovered the bustling Saint-Germain-des-Prés district and at the Club Saint-Germain met the actress Brigitte Auber, who had recently acted for the director Alfred Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief.

[20] In the Cinecittà studios, on the sidelines of the filming of Charles Vidor's A Farewell to Arms, he underwent conclusive auditions and Selznick offered him a seven-year contract in the United States on the condition that he learn English.

Delon returned to Paris and began to study English, but the actress Michèle Cordoue, whose lover he had become, convinced her husband, the director Yves Allégret, to hire him to shoot his first film, Quand la femme s'en mêle.

[citation needed] In 1958, he became a young leading man, he was chosen by the actress Romy Schneider, who had become a world celebrity following the success of the Sissi film trilogy, to play her male partner in Christine by Pierre Gaspard-Huit.

However, they ended up falling in love and the "fiancés of Europe" celebrated their official engagement, organized by Romy's mother and stepfather in Morcote, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Lugano, in front of the international press, without planning a date for a possible wedding.

[23] After Christine, where he played his first important role, Delon had his first success in Michel Boisrond's Weak Women, where he reunited with Mylène Demongeot and also shared the bill with other young leads, Pascale Petit and Jacqueline Sassard.

[citation needed] In a 1959 interview first aired on the French television program Cinépanorama, conducted during the filming of Rocco and His Brothers, Alain Delon expressed his admiration for Jean Marais, stating that he idolized the actor.

More popular was an all-star anthology film Famous Love Affairs (1961); Delon's segment cast him as Albert III, Duke of Bavaria, opposite Brigitte Bardot.

[28] Peter O'Toole was cast instead, but then Delon was signed by Seven Arts to a four-picture deal, including a big budget international movie of the Marco Polo story and The King of Paris, about Alexandre Dumas.

[37] Instead, Delon signed a three-picture deal with Columbia, for whom he appeared in the big budget action film Lost Command (1966), playing a member of the French Foreign Legion, alongside Anthony Quinn and Claudia Cardinale.

[50][51] While making the 1969 thriller La Piscine (The Swimming Pool)[52] with Romy Schneider, the body of Delon's Yugoslav secretary and bodyguard Stefan Marković,[53] apparently murdered, was found in a rubbish dump near Paris.

[83] In 2009 and 2015, Christian Dior used images of the young Alain Delon and excerpts of his 1960s films The Swimming Pool and The Last Adventure respectively in the Eau Sauvage cologne advertising campaigns.

"[88] Following some articles in the press and testimony by Boriboj Akov, the investigation involved the former prime minister (and future president) of France, Georges Pompidou,[89] who testified that he and his wife had been present at certain parties with Marković and Delon.

De Marenches fired René Bertrand, alias Colonel Beaumont, Director of Research at the S.D.E.C.E, who had been involved in the investigation of Jean-Charles Marchiani and was the subject of rumors in the D.S.T., the French counter-espionage service, that he might be a Soviet agent.

[90] On 5 July 2023, Delon's three children filed a complaint against his companion Hiromi Rollin, alleging psychological harassment, interception of correspondence, animal cruelty, intentional violence, unlawful confinement, and abuse of weakness.

Subsequently, Anthony Delon filed a police report against Anouchka, accusing her of not informing the family about the negative results of five cognitive tests conducted by their father between 2019 and 2022, after he suffered a severe stroke in 2019.

[152][153][154] A number of personalities paid tribute to him, including Brigitte Bardot, Claudia Cardinale, Céline Dion, Costa-Gavras, Patricia Kaas (president of the Cinémathèque française), Gilles Jacob, Jean-Michel Jarre, actors Dany Boon, Arielle Dombasle, Pierre Arditi, Jean Dujardin, Richard Berry, and Patrick Chesnais, writer Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Mireille Mathieu, and Carla Bruni.

[155][156][157][158][159] Internationally, actors Sarik Andreasyan, Antonio Banderas, Susana Giménez, Mirtha Legrand, Sophia Loren, Ekaterina Klimova, Ornella Muti, Ottavia Piccolo, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, and director Jim Jarmusch also paid their respects.

"[164][165] Numerous political figures also honored the actor's memory, including Emmanuel Macron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Gabriel Attal, Marine Le Pen, François Fillon, Culture Minister Rachida Dati and Matteo Salvini in Italy.

[194] Tributes The 2024 Angoulême Francophone Film Festival, taking place a few days after Alain Delon's death, changed its programming to screen Notre histoire by Bertrand Blier.

[214] Jean-Michel Frodon, a film critic and historian, points out that in post-war French cinema, Delon is a unique figure, whose energy and intelligence on screen were superbly exploited by filmmakers such as Jean-Pierre Melville.

"[222] American producer Robert Evans paid tribute to Delon in his memoirs The Kid Stays in the Picture – Hyperion Books, 1994, considering him as his "brother in life as in cinema" and "the most beautiful actor in Europe".

[224]Director Bertrand Blier speculates that the meeting between Alain Delon and the filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville, "historic, charged with a mutual fascination", was at the origin of the success of this classic: "The Samurai was a completely bizarre film.

Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), [227][228][229] Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction),[230][231][232][233] Jim Jarmusch,[234][235] Michael Mann (Collateral, Heat and The Limits of Control),[236][237][238][239] John Woo,[240] Johnnie To (Fulltime Killer),[241] David Fincher (The Killer),[242] Takeshi Kitano,[243] Nicolas Winding Refn,[244] Luc Besson (Léon: The Professional),[245] Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Anton Corbijn (The American),[246][247] Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer),[248] Chad Stahelski (John Wick franchise)[249] have all taken the motifs from this feature film, while adapting it to their respective directing styles.

[250][251][252][253] Many New Hollywood films and critical successes such as William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) contain explicit references to Le Samouraï and the character of Jef Costello played by Delon.

Antonio Banderas (The Skin I Live In) by Pedro Almodóvar),[258] Gael García Bernal (Bad Education by Pedro Almodóvar),[259][260] Tom Cruise (Collateral by Michael Mann),[261] Michael Fassbender (The Killer by David Fincher),[262] Tony Leung (Hard Boiled by John Woo),[263][264] Richard Gere (American Gigolo by Paul Schrader),[265] Ryan Gosling (Drive by Nicolas Winding Refn),[266] Keanu Reeves (John Wick by Chad Stahelski),[267][268][269] Forest Whitaker (Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai[270] and Two Men in Town[271][272]), and Chow Yun-Fat (The Killer by John Woo)[273][274] have all been inspired by Alain Delon and his performances to create and refine interpretations that are often reminiscent of those of the French actor.

According to the American Film Institute,[297] Delon was considered for roles in Joshua Logan's Fanny (1961), Tony Richardson's The Loved One (1965), Sydney Pollack's This Property Is Condemned (1966), Henri Verneuil's The Scavengers (1968), Taxi Driver[298][better source needed] (1976) by Martin Scorsese, and John Huston's Escape to Victory (1981).

[315] Lost Bullets, a comic book written by Walter Hill, features protagonist Roy Nash about a professional killer who has received a life sentence in the Joliet prison in Illinois.

[319][320] A significant part of the work of Russian artist and academician Nikas Stepanovich Safronov focuses on his series titled River of Time, where he portrays various modern personalities, whether famous politicians, actors, or pop music stars.