Alain Delon, the internationally acclaimed French actor who played both villains and cops and set hearts racing around the world, has died aged 88, French media reported. With his handsome looks and tender manner, the prolific actor managed to combine toughness with an appealing, vulnerable quality that made him one of France’s most memorable leading men. Delon was also a producer, appearing in plays and, in later years, television films.

His children announced the artist’s death in a statement to French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday, a common practice in France. Tributes to Delon immediately poured in on social media platforms, and all of France’s leading media outlets covered his successful career extensively.

At the height of his career in the 1960s and 1970s, Delon was the target of some of the world’s best directors, from Luchino Visconti to Joseph Losey.

In his later years, Delon became disillusioned with the film industry, saying that money had destroyed the dream. “Money, commerce and television have destroyed the dream machine,” he wrote in a 2003 edition of the weekly newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur. “My cinema is dead. And so am I.”

But he continued to work frequently, appearing in several television films in his 70s. Delon’s presence was unforgettable whether he was playing morally corrupt heroes or romantic leads. He first gained recognition in 1960 with Plein Soleil, directed by René Clément, in which he played a murderer who tries to assume the identities of his victims.

He made several Italian films, most notably with Visconti in the 1961 film Rocco and His Brothers, in which Delon plays a self-sacrificing brother who tries to help his sibling. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

The Visconti film Le Guepard (The Leopard), starring Delon, won the Palme d’Or, the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1963. His other films included Clément’s Is Paris Burning?, with a screenplay by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola, Jacques Deray’s La Piscine (The Sinners) and, unlike most, Losey’s The Assassination of Trotsky in 1972.

In 1968, Delon began producing films, and by 1990 he had made 26, remaining part of a rapid and confident dynamic that he maintained throughout his life.

Delon’s self-confidence was evident in his statement to Femme in 1996: “I want to be loved as I love myself!” This reflected his charismatic screen persona.

Delon continued to captivate audiences for years to come, drawing criticism for comments he considered outdated. In 2010, he appeared in “Un mari de trop” (“One Husband Too Many”) and returned to the stage in 2011 with “An Ordinary Day” alongside his daughter Anouchka.

He briefly headed the Miss France jury, but resigned in 2013 after disagreements arose over some controversial statements, including criticism of women, LGBTQIA+ rights and migrants. Despite these controversies, he received a Palme d’Honneur at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, a decision that sparked further debate.

Delon was born on November 8, 1935 in Sceaux, south of Paris. After his parents separated, he was placed with a foster family at the age of four. He then attended a Roman Catholic boarding school.

At the age of 17, Delon joined the navy and was sent to Indochina. Back in France in 1956, he worked in various odd jobs, from waiter to transporter at the Paris meat market, before turning to acting.

Delon had a son, Anthony, with his then wife Nathalie Canovas in 1964, who starred alongside him in Jean-Pierre Melville’s “The Samurai” in 1967. He had two more children, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, with a later partner, Rosalie van Breemen, with whom he produced a song and a video clip in 1987. He was also thought to be the father of Ari Boulogne, the son of the German model and singer Nico, although he never publicly acknowledged paternity. “I am very good at three things: my job, foolishness and children,” he said in an interview with L’Express in 1995.

Delon was involved in many different activities throughout his life, from building a stable for harness racing horses to developing perfumes for men and women, followed by watches, glasses and other accessories. He also collected paintings and sculptures.

In 1999, Delon announced the end of his acting career, but then continued it, appearing in Bertrand Blier’s “Les Acteurs” (The Actors) that same year. He later appeared in several police series on television. In 2022, he starred in his last film before retirement, with Juliette Binoche in “The Empty House” directed by Patrice Leconte.

His good looks helped him. In August 2002, Delon told the weekly magazine L’Humanité Hebdo that otherwise he would no longer be in the business. “You will never see me old and ugly,” he said, when he was almost 70, “because first I either go or I die.”

But it wasn’t until 2019 that Delon summed up his feelings about the meaning of his life at a gala event in his honor at the Cannes Film Festival. “One thing I know for sure: if there is one thing I am truly proud of, it is my career.”