by When actress and singer Marianne Faithfull appeared opposite the late actor Alain Delon in the 1968 erotic drama The Girl On A Motorcycle, she gave him the highest praise. “We think alike in many ways and he’s a totally committed actor,” she said. “He helped me a lot with his ability to ignore external things when he’s working.” There is a famous contemporary picture of the two laughing together, seemingly completely wrapped up in each other, with Faithfull’s boyfriend Mick Jagger sitting disconsolately beside her.
However Faithfull’s opinion of Delon improved. Not only did she describe him as a “pompous prat” in her 1994 autobiography Faithfull after being 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 worse than “c___”.
That old friend was Nico, Faithfull’s companion in the sixties, and Song for Nico is haunting about his former lover; The lyrics to the song include the harsh lines “And Delon will still be a c___/Yes, she’s in the s___, even though she’s innocent.” Faithfull, who is still alive today, remains one of the greatest survivors of the rock’n’roll era, despite her battles with drug addiction and personal tragedy.
Nico, who died of a cerebral haemorrhage following a cycling accident in 1988 at the age of 49, was much less fortunate than her friend, leading a life of misery and controversy. And the man responsible for much of this misery has just died aged 88, hailed by everyone from President Macron down as one of the greatest French stars of all time.
Many of the high-profile women with whom Delon had affairs might agree with this generous assessment. The famously handsome and charismatic actor was only married once, to the actress Nathalie Barthélémy between 1964 and 1969. But his list of paramours was one of the most impressive and eclectic in French cultural history – which, in the light of that country, says a lot. As well as long-term involvement with the actresses Romy Schneider, Maddly Bamy and Mireille Darc (the latter pair as part of menage-a-trois), Delon was with model-turned-journalist Rosalie van Breemen between 1987 and 2001. They met when she was 21 and he was 52, as is the way of these things.
However it was his shorter outfits, real or rumored, that attracted the most attention. Delon was famously described as “the male Brigitte Bardot” in his early 1960s days, one of the most famous people on the planet, and it was fitting that Bardot herself came forward with a tribute to him after his death, saying that he had left “a big void that nothing and no one will be able to fill”. Undoubtedly, the two were said to be romantically involved after they met on the set of a movie called Famous Love Affairs (yes, really). However, Delon denied this: “As surprising as it can be, nothing ever happened, we just had the best friendship for 65 years now,” he said.
There is a certain irony in the fact that both Delon and Bardot had questionable political sympathies as they grew older as well as being the sex symbols of their generation. He maintained a strong friendship with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the president of the far-right National Front, and Bardot was repeatedly fined for making racist and xenophobic remarks about those she claimed permanently abused animals, as well to offer a series of extremely conservative views about everything from his nation’s schools (“dens of depravities filed with drug dealers, youth terrorist clubs and condom users”) to gays and lesbians (“cheap fagots or circus freaks” ). It is a long way from the days of their youth and glamorous.
As was, in its own way, his involvement with Nico, which began when the two met on the adaptation of Patricia Highsmith Plein Soleil. Delon was, perhaps fittingly, cast as the amoral but charming protagonist Tom Ripley, and Nico, who by then was established internationally with an iconic appearance as herself in La Dolce Vita by Fellini, but its commitments. Due to her modeling career in New York she was unable to accept the part. (Other accounts suggest that she mixed up the filming dates and arrived late for a set, only to find that someone else had already taken her place,)
However, she made a big impression on Delon, and he on her. She would later say that “he was the most dangerous man I ever met… he was like a gypsy, with strong eyes and dark hair, and I wanted him for myself.” She would be both happy and disappointed in this wish. Shortly after the film was finished, he went out to the United States in search of her, before the two – inevitably – began an affair. After having sex for the first time with Delon, she told her friend Carlos de Maldonado-Bostock, “very happy and excited” “that I have just slept with Alain Delon!” He was unimpressed. “It was like Snow White met her prince. She was obsessed with this lonely man.”
Nico was studying acting, under the tutelage of Lee and Anna Strasberg, and for a while it was an intoxicating and exciting experience for her to be swept up in Delon’s orbit, the riot of New York nightclubs and elegant societies. Typically, Delon sent his Ferrari over from France, driving Nico at hair-raising speeds across the country and being frequently stopped by the police.
After a few months of this, reality set in. Nico found out that she was pregnant with Delon, and for all his claims of undying love and devotion, he was already scarpered. As she later said: “I waited three months in New York, alone, thinking he would come; after that, disturbed, 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 encouraged her to have an abortion, but she refused. “I’m not going to let him get away with it,” she said. “This child should be mine. I also want to have someone for me.” In the end, her child was born on 11 August 1962, a boy she named Christian Aaron Boulogne but nicknamed ‘Ari’.
Accounts of what happened there differ widely. In Nico’s perhaps romantic memory, she wrote to Delon to inform him of the arrival of his son, and, after a break of a few months, the two met in a “very sweet meeting”. Delon told Nico that “I’m going to buy you an apartment where you could live with the child. A mutual friend will take care of you. If you need anything call me at the Hotel Carlton, in Cannes.” After that, Delon provided financial support from time to time for the child, but one day, his secretary Georges Beaume visited Nico and told her “seriously” that “Alain wants this story to be over”. She was left to raise Ari as a single mother.
But that is not what happened. Nico, eager to continue her career without the burden of a child, left Ari with her mother in Ibiza. But because her mother had Parkinson’s disease and was unable to cope with the demands of a toddler, the child was left alone, with predictable dire consequences. Delon’s family arrived at the faeces and vomit house where the unfortunate infant lived, and forcibly adopted him.
As Delon’s half-sister Pauledith Soubrier said: “I came and I was surprised. The boy was kept in a room, quite dark, and he was afraid, curled up like an animal.” The child was then subjected to what Delon’s mother called “kidnapping, legal kidnapping!” Even if his father had nothing to do with him, and if his mother saw that her career and her own life were more important than taking care of her son, he would at least be given some semblance of a normal life the family.
After that, the unfortunate Ari who did not exist untypical of an illegitimate offspring was cast the reputation of careless. His father did not acknowledge or accept him, despite having “at least four” other children with different women. But Nico was quickly involved with Brian Jones and Lou Reed of the Rolling Stones, herself absent and neglectful. Delon’s mother claimed that Nico saw Ari once in three years at one point; the singer hit back, saying she was denied access to see her son.
Ari himself would go on to live a sectarian and turbulent life after his mother’s death, taking up careers as an actor and photographer and finally died in 2023 at the age of 60 from a heroin overdose. By then, he was partially paralyzed, and a long-time drug user; coverage of his death was limited, with one story noting that he “claimed” to be Delon’s son.
Delon’s comments praised his ability as an actor, his charisma and his magnetism. All these things can be true, but his failings as a person should not be ignored either. “Women became my inspiration. I owe them everything,” he declared in 2018. “They inspired me to look better than anyone else, stand stronger and taller than anyone else, and see it in their eyes.” This, however, was far from the usually unfortunate end of his relationship.
He was unable to achieve lasting loyalty or love, and there were rumors that he would attack those he was in a relationship with. His son Alain-Fabien, who he had with van Breemen, claimed that Delon broke his mother’s nose and eight of her ribs by beating her. Delon denied this but admitted to “slapping” her, as well as the other women in his life. So much for seeing him standing “stronger and taller.”
One of Delon’s last roles was in The Return of Casanova, an unremarkable 1992 romp in which he played the titular lover. It is heartening to think that Delon came to see himself as someone like Casanova or Byron whose romances and affairs were all-consuming, and those unfortunate enough to be left behind simply faded into insignificance. consequently. They should be remembered, too.
