Alain Delon, the legendary actor and sex symbol who dominated French cinema in the 1960s with films such as “The Cold Samurai” and “The High Noon,” has died aged 88. The news was announced in a statement to AFP. Delon died at his longtime home in Douchy, France.

“He died peacefully at his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” the statement said. According to Deadline, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a translated statement: “Whether Mr Klein or Rocco, the Leopard or the Samurai, Alain Delon played legendary roles and made the world dream. He shook up our lives with his unforgettable face. Melancholic, popular, mysterious, he was more than a star: a French monument.”

Delon first rose to prominence in 1959 with the comedy Women Are Weak, which was a huge success in France and widely shown in America. However, he achieved his status as a serious actor the following year with director René Clément’s Purple Noon, based on the novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. This was followed shortly after by Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, which was poorly received on its initial release but eventually became considered a classic of the Italian neorealism movement.

Delon’s star continued to rise in the 1960s, when his acting talent, charm and stunning looks landed him roles with many of the best European directors of the time. He worked again with Visconti in The Leopard and with Clément in Is Paris Burning?, and also worked with the likes of Michelangelo Antonioni in L’Eclisse and Jean-Pierre Melville in The Cruel Angel, bringing a gritty image to the screen in these modern classics.

In many ways, Delon was the quintessential French movie star of the 1960s. In an era dominated by cinephile filmmakers who combined Hollywood cliches like gangsters and detectives with a unique European art-house sensibility, Delon was the rare talent who looked as good as the biggest Hollywood leading men but also had the acting chops to rival the best French actors.

Partly because of his status as a sex symbol and his accent, Delon was frequently cast in female roles and struggled to find success in the United States. He often played “exotic foreign lovers” when he wanted to act in American films, eventually giving up his hopes of American stardom and spending the 1970s making crime and swashbuckler films in France.

Delon experienced something of a resurrection as a serious actor late in his career, winning a César in 1984 for his performance in Notre Histoire and eventually working with Jean-Luc Godard in Nouvelle Vague in 1990. He remained active as an actor until the early 2010s, working mainly on French television projects. In 2019, he received an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in honor of his long career.

While films like Rocco and His Brothers and The Cruel Knight will always live on as classics, Delon’s legacy is bigger than any one film. He was a movie star in every sense of the word, a sex symbol whose name was on everything from clothes and watches to cigarettes. Delon was one of the most famous actors of an era when European films flourished, and nothing short of a film icon.