Glamorous French star Nathalie Delon dies at 79

Paris - Delon shot to international fame in 1967 in the hitman flick “Le Samourai”.

The French actress Nathalie Delon — once regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world — died of cancer on Thursday, her son told AFP on Thursday.

“My mother died this morning at 11 am in Paris, surrounded by her family and friends,” actor Anthony Delon said.

“She died from a very fast cancer,” he told AFP. She was 79.

Delon shot to international fame in 1967 in the hitman flick “Le Samourai” — now hailed as a classic — opposite her then husband, the French screen legend Alain Delon.

But the actress — who was born Francine Canovas to a Spanish family in Morocco — was already a star of the gossip columns as the woman who lured Delon away from his longtime lover, film star Romy Schneider.

Nathalie Delon would later have affairs with Hollywood actor Richard Burton and American singer Eddie Fisher — the father of “Star Wars” actress Carrie Fisher — both of whom had been married to Elizabeth Taylor.

She met Delon in a Paris nightclub when she was 21 and he was with Schneider, the Austrian-born star of “Sissi” and “What’s New Pussycat?”

Delon kept their affair from Schneider before marrying Nathalie in secret in August 1964 and taking off to Los Angeles with her, where she gave birth a month later to their son Anthony.

Although Nathalie Delon was the only woman the notorious womaniser ever married, she later admitted that Schneider haunted their relationship.

Delon, now 85, has also been unwell of late, suffering a stroke last year.