Birds hide to die, but big cats die in the spotlight. Since the early days of 2024, the family of famed actor Alain Delon has been tearing itself apart in broad daylight, as the public watches in dismay and fascination. In France, not since the terrible battle over rock star Johnny Hallyday's inheritance in 2017 has a family's turmoil caused so much noise, created so much curiosity and aroused so much unease.

There's one major difference: Hallyday was dead and buried when the war was declared between his wife, Laeticia, and his children David and Laura. Although considerably weakened by a stroke in 2019, Alain Delon is still alive and kicking, and is a witness, distressed and powerless, to the fight between his three children.

Although the legendary actor of Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers
(1960) and The Leopard (1963) often retreats into silence, finds it difficult to express himself, can hardly hear and appears trapped in a body and brain that awaken only intermittently, his three children, Anthony, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, agree on at least one point: Their father understands what's going on around him.

Every lunchtime, or early afternoon, when he emerges from sleepless nights at his estate in Douchy, central France, which he hasn't left since the summer, Alain flips through the copy of his favorite daily newspaper, Le Parisien, which waits for him on the kitchen table. In it, the 88-year-old reads the chronicle of a family in tatters – his own.

For the past two weeks, this fire-and-brimstone group of siblings has attacked each other in a mortifying crescendo: insults, the most sordid accusations, the broadcasting of clandestine recordings and the filing of all kinds of complaints. On January 4, Paris Match ran the headline "In the name of the father," chronicling every move of Alain and his family for over half a century, each claiming their place as the "best" child.

"It has to stop, everyone has to calm down, enough is enough, now," Christophe Aleya, Alain's lawyer since 2019, told Le Monde. But this appeal comes a little late, as the destruction machine has already run amok.

'An earthquake'

The first thunderclap erupted a few months ago. On July 5, the patriarch's children, united for the occasion, forcibly got rid of their father's Japanese "lady-in-waiting," 66-year-old Hiromi Rollin, and filed a complaint against her for moral harassment, misappropriation of correspondence and animal abuse. According to Aleya, who drafted the complaint, "Ms. Rollin had become increasingly aggressive and temperamental. She was constantly bad-mouthing the children. She pestered Mr. Delon from morning to night to marry her. He couldn't stand her anymore, he was fed up with being in constant conflict with her."

You have 90% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.