In 2010, an advertising campaign resurfaced a face from 1968: a dark-haired, blue-eyed man of unspeakable beauty. The few shots used to sell a perfume in just 30 seconds provoked conventional, but not unexpected descriptions: feline, sensual, irresistible. In 2010, Alain Delon was 75 years old. The image brought out the definitive incarnation of the actor, and the ultimate (perhaps the only) universal male star of French cinema. The ad used footage from La Piscine (1969), a disturbing feature film the actor starred in.

Directed by one of Delon's preferred filmmakers, Jacques Deray, La Piscine made all of the actor's facets shine: the dramatic, albeit disturbing, talent; the imagery of luxury and debauchery; and the confusion between public and private life. (For this film, he had demanded to co-star alongside his official fiancée in his early days, Romy Schneider.) While Delon was shooting La Piscine in Saint-Tropez, he had to return to Paris to testify, before being placed in police custody, as part of the Marković affair. This political scandal began when one of Delon's bodyguards was found dead; the bodyguard's brother started a feud with Delon and his friends, including President Georges Pompidou.

Delon is a character before an artist, a face before a person. He was the craftsman – not always consciously – of this unmatched identity in French cinematic history, which has often overshadowed his work. Few actors have devoted themselves so intensely to film. He had barely begun his career when he gave himself entirely to René Clément in Plein soleil (Purple Moon, 1960) and to Luchino Visconti in Rocco et ses frères (Rocco and his Brothers, 1961). He embodied characters – the criminal, according to Patricia Highsmith, and the Dostoevskian figure, according to Visconti – that had almost always been underestimated.

Making headlines

To this legacy, we must also add the part that Delon took in creating the films in which he acted the best: L'Insoumis (The Unvanquished, 1964) by Alain Cavalier, Mr. Klein (1976) by Joseph Losey and many more. But the artist's work has passed through the filter of public opinion. A cinema-goer born in 1940 will remember the blue-eyed youth who appeared more often than not in courtrooms; one born in 1970 will remember the man who proclaimed both his friendship for Jean-Marie Le Pen and his commitment to peace in New Caledonia.

Delon could never be satisfied with just doing his job, unless it was to make headlines. Courtrooms, auction houses and racetracks were his kingdoms, anywhere that he could boast of his blue blood, that of the stars. In 2013, he infuriated people by saying he was against marriage for everyone. "Against nature," proclaimed the man who grew up in the auspices of Jean-Claude Brialy and Luchino Visconti, two homosexual actors. While later in his career, he starred alongside his last-born child, Anouchka, fights against his eldest sons were a regular part of his public life.

How to be a patriarch when you were an unloved child?

But how to be a patriarch when you were an unloved child? Delon was born on November 8, 1935 in Sceaux, a prosperous southern Paris suburb. His father ran a small cinema, the Regina, and his mother worked in a pharmacy. When he was 4 years old, his parents separated and he soon found himself moving around boarding schools in Issy-les-Moulineaux from which he was regularly expelled. At one such establishments, he was part of a choir visited by Angelo Roncalli, apostolic nuncio and future Pope John XXIII, who congratulated the young soprano.

Departure to Indochina

At 15, he decided to leave for Chicago with a fellow student, but the two boys were caught in Châtellerault, in Vienna. Placed in an apprenticeship with his stepfather, a pork butcher in Bourg-la-Reine, Delon obtained his certificate of professional aptitude. He was dissatisfied enough with his circumstances to go along with it. The air force could not accept him for a few more months, so he chose the navy. In January 1953, at the age of 17, he signed a three-year contract. He extended it by two years to follow his fellow marine fusiliers to Indochina, where he was sent to the battlefield.

The young man remembered seeing the 1954 film Touchez pas au grisbi, by Jacques Becker, with actor Jean Gabin on Catinat Street in Saigon. He admitted to borrowing a Jeep without permission and leaving it in a ditch as well as stealing equipment, which meant he spent his 20^th birthday in prison. Back in metropolitan France by 1956, he returned to Paris, where he was in turn a waiter and a market porter, while spending his nights in Pigalle. He entered into the artistic Left Bank circles, seduced the actress Brigitte Auber and befriended Jean-Claude Brialy, and decided to go to Cannes for the 1957 edition of the film festival.

There, Delon was spotted by Henry Willson, a Hollywood agent specializing in handsome men (Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter). Willson sent the young man to Rome, where he spent a trial period in front of David O. Selznick. The American producer offered him a seven-year contract, provided that the Frenchman learned English. Delon returned to Paris and accepted Yves Allégret's proposal for a role as a small-time hustler in Quand la femme s'en mêle (Send a Woman When the Devil Fails, 1957). Delon said shortly after that "I was not really interested. So Yves had to fight, not only with his producers to take me on, but also with me. Eventually, I agreed to shoot to please him."

Leading roles

In the same period, Delon did a few minor films one after the other: Sois belle et tais-toi (1958) by Marc Allégret, Yves's brother, and Christine (1958) by Pierre Gaspard-Huit. On the set of Christine, he met and fell in love with Romy Schneider. He starred next in Faibles femmes (Women are Weak, 1959) by Michel Boisrond. Boisrond offered him a leading role and gave him an entourage: the journalist Georges Beaume, who became his manager, and the agent Olga Horstig, who made him meet Luchino Visconti in 1959. Delon was already worried about his fate, refusing the label of young romantic lead because he saw himself as "the opposite."

The press noticed his physique and presence, so René Clément decided to offer him the role of Tom Ripley in Plein soleil, which he was preparing to adapt from Patricia Highsmith's novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Filmed in 1959, alongside Maurice Ronet and Marie Laforêt, Plein soleil was a learning opportunity for Delon. Clément was an actor's director with irrefutable precision; he led Delon down Ripley's path of perversion, making him a poisonous seducer.

His Rocco, a boxer dedicated to the redemption of his clan, is a stunning performance.

No sooner was the film released to great fanfare in early 1960 that Delon, who had seduced the Italian count during their first meeting, began shooting Rocco et ses frères under Visconti's direction. Even more than Ripley, the role of Rocco – the southern emigrant who arrived in Milan with his family – was a challenge. Delon was surrounded by an impressive cast, including Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot and Claudia Cardinale. He embodied the character of an uprooted peasant, the opposite of his personal life experience. He triumphed modestly, through self-sacrifice and inventiveness. He gave a stunning performance as Rocco, a boxer dedicated to the redemption of his family. Shown in Venice, the film won the Silver Lion and confirmed the international reputation of its young star.

Theater and comedies

Returning to Paris, he immediately tried the new adventure of the stage. He acted in Tis Pity She's a Whore at the Théâtre Marigny in 1961, put on by Visconti. Delon's co-star was Schneider, his companion since the filming of Christine. The critics were divided. In Le Monde, Bertrand Poirot-Delpech mentioned "the nervous faces [of the young actors] who let their poor inadequacy show," but praised their beauty.

Delon followed up with one of his very rare comedies, Quelle joie de vivre (The Joy of Living, 1961) by René Clément and a role in Les Amours célèbres (Famous Love Affairs, 1961), which allowed him to share the set with Brigitte Bardot. He was approached by David Lean to play Prince Ali in Lawrence of Arabia. Even though the role went to Omar Sharif, it didn't matter as Michelangelo Antonioni had asked him to be Monica Vitti's co-star in L'Eclipse, presented at Cannes in 1962. Describing the experience of working with the modernist master, Delon said that "it was not a very exciting role for me, but I had the opportunity to be directed by Antonioni, to understand his work."

It was probably not by chance that this early career was enough to guarantee him lasting fame in Japan, which the actor who who later play Le Samouraï visited for the first time in 1963. Not only were his films successful in Japan, but the actor could count on his Japanese fame to ensure a stable source of income, thanks to the use of his image in many advertisements.

Triumph of The Leopard

In the spring of 1963, just before The Leopard was presented at Cannes, Mélodie en sous-sol (Any Number Can Win), by Henri Verneuil, was released. Delon rubbed shoulders with the same Gabin he had admired in Touchez pas au grisbi. Delon also got closer to French commercial cinema, of which he would soon become a pillar. In the meantime, it was time for the triumph of The Leopard in which he played Tancred, who professed that "everything must change so that everything can stay the same." Delon held his own alongside Burt Lancaster (who played his uncle, the old prince) and Claudia Cardinale (the commoner he wants to marry for love as much as for the social and economic benefits). He contributed significantly to the film's triumph, which became an instant cinematic classic and was awarded a Palme d'Or.

He then acted in Clément's Les Félins (Joy House) with Jane Fonda and invested as a producer in a daring film, L'Insoumis, by Alain Cavalier. It was 1964 and the Algerian War had only been over for two years, but Delon did not shy away from playing a lost soldier with the OAS (Secret Armed Organization, a far-right French dissident paramilitary group) in Cavalier's film. His character kidnapped a lawyer close to the National Liberation Front, an Algerian nationalist political party. Cavalier recounted, "I didn't make L'Insoumis about history or Algeria. I made it because I wanted to make a film with Delon. I spoke with him. He told me about his life, and the most interesting thing for me was this very uncertain three-year period he spent in Indochina."

Upon its release, L'Insoumis – which was cut by about 20 minutes following a lawsuit – was snubbed by the public. A few months earlier, in March, Henri Langlois, the director of the Cinémathèque, organized a retrospective for Delon, an unprecedented gesture that put all the weight of glory on a 29-year-old actor.

Meeting with Melville

It was at this time that he broke up with Schneider and, together with his wife Nathalie, tried to find success in Hollywood. Their son Anthony was born there, but the new star struggled to make inroads. There was talk of him filming an adaptation of Colette's Chéri, first with George Cukor, then with Tony Richardson. Finally, he had to settle for San Francisco Killers by Ralph Nelson, Texas Across The River by Michael Gordon (with Dean Martin) and Centurions by Mark Robson, a film critical of the Algerian War. In 1966, he returned to France to be Jacques Chaban-Delmas in Paris brûle-t-il? (Is Paris Burning?), by René Clément.

"You've been reading your script for seven minutes and there's not a word of dialogue yet. That's enough for me. I'm making this movie."

In 1967, Jean-Pierre Melville went to Delon's house, script in hand. The director recounted that the actor interrupted the reading by telling him: "You've been reading your script for seven minutes and there's still not a shred of dialogue. That's enough for me. I'm making this movie. What's it called?" This is how Delon became Jeff Costello, known as Le Samouraï, a lone killer on the verge of schizophrenia.

The two men would collaborate twice more, for Le cercle rouge (The Red Circle, 1970) and Un Flic ("The Cop," 1972), the last feature film by Melville, who died the following year. Le cercle rouge was a huge success, as was Le Samouraï, while Un Flic was a disappointment. It is in these films that Delon took on the roles of a loner, a cop and a mobster who oppose the world with an indifference that is almost accidentally seducing. He would use this model under the direction of filmmakers less important than Melville, such as Jaques Deray, José Giovanni and José Pinheiro.

The Marković case

The turmoil of the May 68 protest movement found Delon on stage, where he acted in Les Yeux crevés ("Hollow Eyes," a play by Jean Cau. The actor may have supported Cinémathèque founder Henri Langlois in a conflict that pitted him against André Malraux, the minister of culture, at the beginning of 1968. But Delon had no sympathy for the students and strikers. He tried to keep his play running before his theater was closed. With the actors Raymond Gérôme and Jacques Dacqmine, he then founded the short-lived Union Professionnelle du Spectacle.

It was only spring but the year was not finished yet with Delon. On October 1, the corpse of Alain and Nathalie Delon's bodyguard and secretary, Stefan Marković, was discovered in a dump in Yvelines. The investigation soon revealed that this Yugoslav crook, taken in by the couple after his release from prison, wrote letters to his brother in Belgrade shortly before his death. In the correspondences, he explained that if something happened to him, it would be necessary "to look to A.D." and François Marcantoni, a former resistance fighter, figure in the Parisian milieu and friend of the actor.

Summoned several times by the investigating magistrate and placed in police custody, Delon defended himself fiercely, especially since the affair took a political turn. Soon, photographs taken during parties organized by Marković reached newspaper offices. These supposedly included sexually-explicit images of Claude Pompidou, wife of former prime minister Georges Pompidou. Delon was involved in this internal settling of accounts with the Gaullist camp, who were accused of planting the pictures. Marcantoni was released and the murder remains unsolved.

Auction houses and racetracks

Others would have stepped out of the spotlight. But Delon did the opposite, alternating his film premieres and spectaculars along the Quai des Orfèvres with appearances at auction houses and racetracks. In July 1969, he acquired one of the last drawings by Albrecht Dürer that was still on the market for 700,000 francs. This was the beginning of a collection that started with drawings. (His interest soon turned to 19^th-century French artists, notably Jean-François Millet and Théodore Géricault). He shifted to Fauvism artworks and then modern animal sculptors. The foremost among them was Rembrandt Bugatti. He was an impulsive buyer, having said, "I bought for passion, never for investment." And he dispersed the bulk of his collection in the 1990s.

In the meantime, he bought a colt at the Deauville races in 1970 for half the price of a Dürer. Delon's stable had some success. But this venture also ended up in court in 1978 when the trainer he had chosen, Pierre-Désiré Allaire, appeared in a case of betting fraud. Delon also became a boxing match promoter, organizing meetings for the world middleweight championship between Jean-Claude Bouttier and Carlos Monzón (1972 and 1973) and between Monzón and Jose Napoles (1974), in Paris and Puteaux. The second meeting was a financial success, garnering 6 million francs.

In 1970, he also took on the role of businessman, producing and starring in Borsalino. The gangster movie was inspired by a book about Marseille mobsters Carbone and Spirito who ran rampant in the 1930s. Borsalino was part of a trend of retro-inspired cinema that began in the United States a few years earlier with Bonnie and Clyde. Effective but uninspired, the film, directed by Jacques Deray, attracted nearly five million viewers. Delon had also convinced his rival and costar Jean-Paul Belmondo to share the poster image with him, not without consequence.

Mass production of film noir projects

Belmondo was furious as his contract guaranteed that his name would be at the top of the poster. This was true as far as the order of presentation of the actors was concerned, but above it was the name of the producer: "Alain Delon presents." Belmondo sued, and Delon kindly remarked in the New York Times that "it's a female reaction." Regarding the Marković affair, he said in the same interview that "I myself am Corsican [his mother was half Corsican], and in places like that they still have a sense of honor and the given word." He added that “I don't worry about what a friend does.”

Topping the box office, Borsalino allowed Delon to star and produce in a series of films noirs. These include Borsalino and Co. (1974), Flic Story (1975), Le Gang (1977), Trois hommes à abattre (Three Men to Kill, 1980) Pour la peau d'un flic (For a Cop's Hide, 1981), Le Choc ("The Shock," 1982) and Ne réveillez pas un flic qui dort (Let Sleeping Cops Lie, 1988). This run of success finally ended at the dawn of the 21^st century. But this productive output should not obscure the more adventurous side of his filmography.

From 1971, he tried his hand at comedy (without much success) with Doucement les basses (Easy Down There) by Jaques Deray. He then filmed L'Été indien (Indian Summer), a portrait of a man adrift. There are also oddities, such as Soleil rouge (Red Sun), directed by Terence Young. In the cosmopolitan western, he starred alongside Toshiro Mifune. Or the rubbish Zorro, which he had Duccio Tessari produce in 1975 to please his then 10-year-old son.

Unusual films

Above all, in 1976, he met Joseph Losey, who was struggling to get the production of Monsieur Klein (Mr. Klein) off the ground. Four years earlier, Delon had already starred in a film by the American exile, The Assassination of Trotsky. He played the Soviet agent Ramon Mercader, who was responsible for executing the revolutionary leader, played by Richard Burton. The film was not a success, even though Delon played a character of fascinating opacity and disgrace. This time, he was a solitary and arrogant man thrown into the wheels of the Nazi extermination machine because of a homonym.

"I knew from the start that I was going to lose all my money with Monsieur Klein."

A quarter of a century later, in Le Monde, the actor recalled a"film written by an Italian and directed by a blacklisted American. Fortunately, there was Joseph Losey to direct Monsieur Klein and me to produce it. Monsieur Klein is considered a cinematic reference, a classic, even if in Paris only 200,000 people saw it. I knew from the start that I was going to lose all my money with Mr. Klein. I took the money from Flic Story to make Monsieur Klein. Flic Story or Parole de flic, I made them while brushing my teeth. For Monsieur Klein, I had to concentrate a bit and compose myself. Otherwise, to kick in a door and fire a gun, I don't need to concentrate."

Delon's candidness casts a more flattering light on the latter part of Delon's career than just reading his filmography. For until the end, between his "cop stories," he took on strange, out-of-the-ordinary projects, not always chosen wisely. At the release of Un amour de Swann ("Swann in Love,"1984), critics howled at the adaptation's betrayal of Marcel Proust, although they praised his performance as the Baron de Charlus. They also applauded his role in René Manzor's Le Passage (The Passage, 1986), which mixed animation and live action. The height of weirdness was reached with Le Jour et la Nuit (Day and Night) by Bernard-Henri Lévy, which was presented at the Berlin Film Festival in February 1997 and earned its performer a permanent place on the list of the worst films ever produced.

A commercial failure and a César

His police films also evolved according to his private life. In the early 1980s, Anne Parillaud succeeded Mireille Darc both on screen and off. He even moved on to direct her in Pour la peau d'un flic, a treacherous adaptation of a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette. After Manchette, it was Frédéric Fajardie who provided the fuel for the Delon machine. In Ne réveillez pas un flic qui dort, our hero fought against the group Police Loyalty (inspired by the very real Honneur de la Police, an ultra-right French police organization).

On the political scene, Delon, however, did everything to ensure his reputation as a man of the right. In 1984, he cemented his friendship with Jean-Marie Le Pen (who was at that time president of the far-right Front National party), calling the Giscard-Chirac rivalry a "quarrel of chicks." Two years later, he received the insignia of commandeur des arts et des lettres (commander of arts and letters) from the hands of socialist politician Jack Lang. Just before the election, Lang (then the minister of culture) had promoted the actor. He wanted to show his appreciation, in the presence of the far-right leader. Delon participated in Raymond Barre's presidential campaign in 1988, before voting yes in the referendum on the Matignon agreements concerning New Caledonia.

He had only two major film projects left. In 1985, he agreed to be in Bertrand Blier's Notre histoire (Our History) at the urging of Nathalie Baye, who would be his co-star. He played a suburbanite, lethargic from alcohol and boredom. The film was initially ignored by the Cannes Film Festival selection committee, which Delon insulted before experiencing a public failure. This defeat was so harsh that he shunned the César ceremony in early 1986, even though he was nominated. Despite being awarded the César for best actor, he didn't enjoy the recognition of his peers in front of television cameras.

'Because you are Godard and I am Delon'

Five years later, in 1990, Delon finally returned to Cannes. The previous year, he contacted producer Alain Sarde in the hope that he would offer him a project capable of restoring his reputation as an actor. Sarde put him in touch with Jean-Luc Godard, who had just directed Johnny Hallyday in Détective. The actor accepted "because you are Godard and I am Delon."

On the set, he bent to the director's whims. "I was sometimes a little disconcerted, but I forced my natural instinct, otherwise the film would not have been made," he told Libération. The result is beautiful and abstruse, but at least Nouvelle Vague (New Wave, 1990) was selected for competition at Cannes. Delon arrived there in a helicopter, showing up with star dancer Patrick Dupond, his partner in Dancing Machine, which was released in November 1990. Admittedly, the film didn't win any awards, but it drew attention to the other side of Delon: this fragile, aging character, who was made to answer the question "What are you doing? – I'm pitiful."

Two years later, he returned to Cannes, but this time with Édouard Niermans' Le Retour de Casanova ("The Return of Casanova"), a costume drama that hardly aroused curiosity. There were still a few thrillers to come – Un Crime (1993) and L'Ours en peluche (The Teddy Bear, 1994), his last two collaborations with the faithful Jacques Deray. There was finally Une chance sur deux (Half a Chance, 1998) an unfortunate attempt to recreate the Borsalino double act with Belmondo. The film was a huge failure and Delon announced his retirement from cinema. He essentially kept his word, appearing only in Bertrand Blier's Les Acteurs (The Actors, 2000) and Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques (Asterix at the Olympic Games, 2008) as an egotistical Julius Caesar.

Success on the small screen

He then moved to the small screen, first playing Fabio Montale, a writer from Marseille who's the hero of Jean-Claude Izzo's novels. The mere announcement of his presence in the role unleashed the fury of Izzo's readers, as the novelist was known for his leftist leanings. Delon tried to appease them by assuring them that the novelist would have been happy to see him in the role. Broadcast on French television in early 2002, the series brought in 12.5 million viewers, a huge success.

Next, he introduced his daughter Anouchka to viewers in an adaptation of Joseph Kessel's Le Lion ("The Lion"). He then returned to the police force in 2003 and 2004 as yet another lonely cop, Frank Riva. It wasn't very successful, performing below Delon's expectations; he had set himself the goal of doing better than Christian Clavier as Napoleon. He then announced his retirement from television.

Delon also made his return to the stage in 1996 in Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's Variations énigmatiques ("Enigmatic Variations") with Francis Huster. In 2011, he took on Une journée ordinaire ("An Ordinary Day"), featuring a father and daughter. Alain and Anouchka Delon took the show on tour until late 2013. Delon was also seen advertising glasses, presiding over a Miss France contest and appearing on talk shows. He was always the same bad-tempered man who stood out in these settings that were too banal for him. It took a poster campaign for a perfume to get back to the start of the star's glory days.