The Delon clan is torn apart. The French cinema icon announced Thursday that he was filing a complaint against his son Anthony after a shocking interview with the latter who denounced the declining state of health of the 88-year-old star and accused his half-sister Anouchka of manipulating him. A look back at the conflicting relationships between father and son.
Tormented by an unhappy and lonely childhood, Alain Delon adores his daughter as much as he maintains stormy relationships with his sons who dreamed of following in his footsteps and making a name for themselves in the shadow of the legend. The star imposed a particularly brutal education on his two sons, which his eldest Anthony describes in Between dog and wolfpublished in March 2023: “I could have deduced that this man, my father, did not love me, and thus let him destroy a part of me”.
His daughter Anouchka, “the woman of his life”
A conflictual relationship which contrasts with the love that the actor has and declaims for his daughter Anouchka, born in 1990 and regularly described as the “woman of [sa] life “. This complicity led the young actress to be appointed executor of Alain Delon’s will. “Their father never hid his preference for his daughter,” says the actor’s biographer Bernard Violet, in an interview with Parisian published Thursday. The actor has already made his arrangements, which are very favorable to his daughter, according to Anthony Delon. “My sister, she has 50% of all my father’s fortune. My brother (Alain-Fabien) and I are what we call the reserve share, so we have 25%,” explained the eldest of the siblings on Friday on CNews.
On the other hand, “my brother and I want my father’s wishes to be respected” by leaving him in his home in Douchy (Loiret), he explained, accusing their sister, who lives in Switzerland, of wanting to “bring back” the star with her, for tax reasons.
The comedian of Cheetah has always been aware of his difficulties as a parent. “I’m not sure I was a good father to them, nor a good grandfather. Was I up to it? I don’t believe it,” he confided, about his sons in 2018 to Paris Match. His first son, Anthony, was born in 1964. The fruit of his love affair with Nathalie, the only woman he married, the boy would experience a troubled childhood, marked by divorce and the absence of his parents.
Two sons caught up in their demons
Same blue eyes, feline gait, fake thug air… After stints in a reformatory then in prison for possession of weapons, Anthony will launch into the cinema but struggles to get rid of the label of “son of”… and prefers to devote himself to fashion, via a line of leather jackets. Three decades later, Alain-Fabien was born in 1994 to the couple that the actor formed with the Dutch model Rosalie Van Breemen: the young man, four years younger than his sister Anouchka, first made headlines for a fire occurred at a party he had organized, minor.
He received a suspended prison sentence and confessed his discomfort in a book: Of the race of lords (2019), the story of an apprentice actor, “caught up in his demons” and dreaming of equaling his father, a famous actor.
A third son never recognized
Seeming more peaceful, the thirty-year-old had posted photos of Christmas Eve in Douchy online at the end of December, showing him at the table alongside his father, Anthony and his two daughters. The absence of his sister Anouchka had been noticed. On the sidelines of this divided brotherhood, Alain Delon has never recognized the paternity of Ari Boulogne, son of the singer Nico of the Velvet Underground, with whom he had an affair in the 1960s. The photographer was raised by his own mother of the actor, he had several stays in psychiatric hospitals and detoxification treatments. He died in May 2023, at the age of 60.