Alain Delon - Definition and Overview

Alain Delon (born November 8, 1935) is a French actor, one of the best known outside his native country.

Delon was born in Sceaux, France. His breakthrough as a film star came with Plein Soleil, a 1962 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Talented Mr Ripley. He also gave tremendous performances in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard and, perhaps his finest moment, Le Samourai. His later work has not reached these hights, and his decline is characteristic of the nouvelle vague of French actors, such as Jean-Paul Belmondo.

After a string of box office disasters in the 1980s and 1990s, culminating in the unexpected failure of Patrice Leconte's film Une Chance sur deux, Alain Delon announced his decision to give up acting in 1997. In 1969, Delon and his wife were at the center of a massive scandal when their bodyguard was found shot dead in a garbage dump.

External links

• IMDB on Alain Delon (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001128/)
• For further information, and a rather surprising amount of 'product', see http://www.alaindelon.com/en/
• With thanks to http://frenchfilms.topcities.com/nf_adelon.html