Glamorous French star Nathalie Delon dies at 79

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

By AFP

Published: Thu 21 Jan 2021, 6:51 PM

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.

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“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.

“Alain never talked about her, but I would see from time to time a shadow of sadness cross his face,” she said later.

Schneider died in 1982, less than a year after her 14-year-old son died after impaling himself accidently on a railing.

Nathalie Delon said she quickly tired of her life with the philandering actor in the Hollywood hills. “I was very naive. He was unfaithful but I wasn’t.

“When I left him I left everything behind me. I took my son and the nanny, and that was all.”

Delon’s own career never got much beyond bit parts in the US, although she continued to live there, returning to France for roles in movies by the auteur Jean-Pierre Melville and Roger Vadim, the man who discovered and then married Brigitte Bardot.

She directed two films herself in the 1980s, “Sweet Lies” and “They Call It An Accident”, in which she also starred.

Despite their failed marriage, she always remained friendly with Delon, and their son posted a photo of them celebrating Christmas together last month.

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