PARIS – Alain Delon, the French actor, producer and writer whose cool, enigmatic beauty made him an international sex symbol, has died at the age of 88.

“He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” a family statement released to the AFP news agency said. Delon had been battling poor health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2019. French President Emmanuel Macron led tributes to the actor. “Melancholic, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: a French monument,” Macron said.

Delon will be remembered as an icon of French and European cinema, who worked with a host of celebrated directors. But he has been criticized for his controversial political views and attitude towards women. Feminists were aghast when he was awarded an honorary Palme d’Or late in his life. Born in Sceaux, a suburb south of Paris, Delon had a turbulent childhood marked by his parents’ divorce and frequent expulsions from school, before serving in the French Navy and later taking on odd jobs in Paris.

He made his first appearance on film in 1957, playing a hitman in the thriller Quand la femme s’en mêle titled Send a Woman When the Devil Fails in English. This was to be the first of many anti-hero roles for Delon, who went on to become a major figure in European film in the 1960s, working with such lauded directors as René Clément (Plein Soleil, 1960, titled Purple Noon in the United States), Luchino Visconti (Rocco and his Brothers, 1960, and The Leopard, 1963 and Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samouraï, 1967).

In 1968, Delon was caught up in a sex, drug and murder scandal involving French high society, known as the Markovic affair. He was questioned but never charged. He also appeared in many English-language productions, including anthology movie The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964) and Westerns Texas Across the River (1966), and Red Sun (1971), but he failed to replicate the success he enjoyed in European cinema. Delon won a César Award, France’s equivalent of an Oscar, for best actor in 1985 for his role as an alcoholic in Bertrand Blier’s Our Story. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance as the passionate, penniless Tancredi in The Leopard. (CNN)…[+]