When actress and singer Marianne Faithfull appeared opposite the late actor Alain Delon in the 1968 erotic drama The Girl On A Motorcycle, she had the highest praise for him. "We think alike in many ways and he is a totally committed actor," she said. "He has helped me a lot by his ability to ignore external things when he is working." There is a famous contemporary photo of the two of them laughing together, apparently completely absorbed in each other, while Faithfull's friend Mick Jagger sits forlornly beside her.
Yet Faithfull's opinion of Delon quickly cooled. Not only did she describe him as a "pompous brat" in her 1994 autobiography Faithfull, after she became one of the few women to reject his inevitable advances, but on her 2002 album Kissin Time, in a song she wrote about an old friend, she described him as nothing more flattering than a "c___".
That old friend was Faithfull's compatriot from the 1960s, Nico, and Song for Nico is scathing about her former lover; the song's lyrics include the cutting lines "And will Delon be still a c___/Yes, she's in the s___, though she is innocent." Faithfull, who is still alive today, remains one of the great survivors of the rock 'n' roll era, despite her battles with drug addiction and personal tragedy.
Nico, who died in 1988 at the age of 49 from a brain hemorrhage following a bicycle accident, was considerably less fortunate than her friend, leading a life of misery and controversy. And the man responsible for much of that misery recently died at the age of 88, hailed by everyone from President Macron to himself as one of the greatest French stars who ever lived.
Many of the prominent women with whom Delon had affairs would disagree with this generous assessment. The famously handsome and charismatic actor was married only once, to actress Nathalie Barthélémy between 1964 and 1969. But his list of mistresses was one of the most distinguished and eclectic in French cultural history - which, considering the country, is saying something. In addition to long-term relationships with actresses Romy Schneider, Maddly Bamy and Mireille Darc (the latter couple as part of a menage-a-three), Delon was together with model and journalist Rosalie van Breemen between 1987 and 2001. They met when she was 21 and he was 52, as it goes with these kinds of things.
Yet it was his brief flings, real or rumoured, that garnered the most attention. Delon was famously described in his 1960s heyday as "the male Brigitte Bardot", one of the most extraordinarily beautiful people on the planet, and it was fitting that Bardot himself came forward to pay tribute to him after his death, saying that he left "a huge void that nothing and no one will ever be able to fill". Inevitably, it was rumoured that the two had a romantic relationship after meeting on the set of a 1961 film called Famous Love Affairs (yes, really). However, Delon denied this: "As surprising as it may be, nothing ever happened, we just had the best friendship of now 65 years," he said.
There's a certain irony in that, despite both being sex symbols of their generation, Delon and Bardot both had questionable political sympathies as they grew older. He maintained a strong friendship with Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National, and Bardot has been fined multiple times for making racist and xenophobic comments about people she sees as perpetuating animal cruelty, and for expressing a range of ultra-conservative opinions on everything from her country's schools ("dens of depravity filled with drug dealers, young terrorist clubs and condom users") to gays and lesbians ("cheap faggots or circus freaks"). It's a long way from their youthful and glamorous heyday.
As, in its own way, was his involvement with Nico, which began when the two met in the Patricia Highsmith adaptation Plein Soleil. Delon was cast, perhaps fittingly, as the amoral but charming protagonist Tom Ripley, and Nico, who had by then established herself internationally with an iconic appearance as herself in Fellini's La Dolce Vita, had originally been offered a small supporting role, but her modeling commitments in New York prevented her from accepting the part. (Other stories suggest that she mixed up shooting dates and arrived late on set, only to find she had already been replaced.)
Nevertheless, she made quite an impression on Delon, and he on her. She would later say that "he was the most dangerous man I have ever met... he was like a gypsy, with strong eyes and dark hair, and I wanted him for myself." She would be both pleased and disappointed by this desire. Shortly after the film was completed, he left for the United States to find her, before the two - inevitably - began an affair. After the first time she had sex with Delon, she told her friend Carlos de Maldonado-Bostock, "very happy and excited" that "I'd just slept with Alain Delon!" He was unimpressed. "It was like Snow White had met her prince. She was obsessed with this horrible man."
Nico studied acting, under the tutelage of Lee and Anna Strasberg, and for a time it was a heady and exciting experience for her to be swept up in Delon's orbit, a riot of New York nightclubs and glamorous associations. Delon usually had his Ferrari shipped over from France, in which he drove Nico around the country at terrifying speeds, frequently being stopped by the police, who, not being known fans of French cinema, were not captivated by the driver's indefatigable charm.
After a few months, reality set in. Nico discovered she was pregnant with Delon's child, and despite all his protestations of love and undying devotion, he had already run away. As she later recalled, "I stayed in New York alone for three months, thinking he would come; later, upset, I went to Paris to look for him, to meet him. I tried to call him, but I couldn't reach him. They always told me that Alain was absent." Her mother urged her to have an abortion, but she refused. "I won't let it drift away," she said. "This child must be mine. I want a person of my own." Finally, their child was born on August 11, 1962, a boy she named Christian Aaron Boulogne, but nicknamed "Ari."
Accounts of what happened next vary considerably. In Nico's perhaps romanticized recollection, she wrote to Delon to inform him of the arrival of his son, and after a break of a few months the two reconciled in a "very sweet conversation." Delon told Nico that "I'm going to buy you an apartment where you can live with the child. A mutual friend will take care of you. If you need anything, just call me at the Hotel Carlton in Cannes." After that, Delon occasionally provided financial support for the child, but one day his secretary Georges Beaume visited Nico and told her "sharply" that "Alain wants this story to be finished." She was left to raise Ari as a single mother.
Yet that's not quite what happened. Nico, wanting to pursue her career without the burden of a child, left Ari with her mother in Ibiza. But because her mother suffered from Parkinson's disease and couldn't cope with the demands of a toddler, the child was left to fend for himself, with predictably dire consequences. Delon's family arrived at the feces- and vomit-strewn house where the unfortunate baby lived and forcibly adopted him.
As Delon's half-sister Pauledith Soubrier recalled, "I arrived and was shocked. The boy was kept in a room, quite dark, and he was scared, crouched like an animal." The child was then subjected to what Delon's mother called "kidnapping, legitimate kidnapping!" Even if his father wanted nothing to do with him, and if his mother considered her own career and life more important than caring for her son, he would at least have some semblance of a normal family life.
Thereafter, the hapless Ari led an existence not atypical for the ostracized illegitimate offspring of the carelessly famous. His father never acknowledged or accepted him, despite eventually having "at least four" other children with different women. But Nico, who quickly developed relationships with Brian Jones and the Rolling Stones' Lou Reed, was an absent and neglectful mother herself. Delon's mother claimed that Nico saw Ari once every three years; the singer hit back, saying she was denied access to see her son.
Ari himself would live a turbulent life after his mother's death, embracing careers as an actor and photographer, eventually dying of a heroin overdose in 2023 at the age of 60. By then, he was partially paralyzed and a long-time drug user; coverage of his death was limited, with one story only noting that he "claimed" to be Delon's son.
Delon's obituaries praised his talents as an actor, his charisma, and his appeal. All of these things may be true, but his shortcomings as a human being cannot be ignored either. "Women became my motivation. I owe everything to them," he explained in 2018. "They were the ones who inspired me to look better than anyone else, to stand stronger and taller than anyone else, and to see it in their eyes." This, however, was a far cry from the typically miserable endings that befell his relationships.
He was incapable of fidelity or lasting love, and there were rumours that he attacked those he was in relationships with. His son Alain-Fabien, whom he had with van Breemen, claimed that Delon had broken his mother's nose and eight of her ribs by hitting her. Delon denied this, but admitted that he had "beaten" her, as well as the other women in his life. So much so that they saw him as "stronger and bigger".
One of Delon's last roles was in The Return of Casanova, an unremarkable 1992 film in which he played the legendary lover. It's tempting to wonder whether Delon came to see himself as a Casanova or Byron figure whose romances and affairs were all-consuming, and those unlucky enough to be left in his wake simply faded away as a result. They, too, should be remembered.