French actress found fame in film noir

HAD HIGH-PROFILE MARRIAGE

Nathalie delon, the actress, who has died aged 79, was a glamorous, quintessentially French beauty who appeared in more than 30 films in the 1960s and 1970s, but was best-known in France for her tempestuous marriage to its leading film star of the era, Alain delon.

After their first meeting, in a Paris nightclub in 1962, they started a clandestine affair.

delon was at the time engaged to German actress romy Schneider; the storms of their relationship had often illuminated the gossip columns. Nathalie was 21, but already had a brief marriage behind her, to Guy barthelemy, by which she had a daughter.

In August 1964, the pair were married in secret near Orleans and driven straight to the docks at Le Havre. There, they boarded the liner France for America.

Nathalie delon was pregnant and six weeks later gave birth to their son Anthony in Los Angeles. Following the success of films such as The Leopard, her husband had landed a contract with MGM. This was soon cancelled, however, and the delons returned to France.

by then, the marriage was already under strain. Nathalie delon, while admitting that she could be hot-tempered, later characterized herself as naive. Her husband was an ardent admirer of other women.

The tension between them charged her debut as an actress, and the only film they made together — Jeanpierre Melville’s influential thriller Le Samourai (1967).

Shortly after filming had finished, Alain delon filed for divorce which was finalized by 1969.

She was born Francine Canovas on Aug. 1, 1941 in Oujda, Morocco, then under French control, although her family’s roots were Spanish. Her father worked for a transport firm, but left the home soon after his daughter’s birth. Her mother remarried, to a train driver, and moved to Casablanca and later took on jobs after her husband died.

delon continued to appear in films throughout the 1970s. She was perhaps best known in britain for her seductive turn in When eight bells Toll (1971).

Her other films included Le Sex Shop (1973), directed by Claude berri, and roger Vadim’s une femme fidele (1976). by the end of that decade, however, as she related in her memoir Pleure pas, c’est pas grave (2006), she had become addicted to heroin.

Later on, she had a relationship for some 15 years with Chris blackwell, the founder of Island records.

delon lived at Sundance, utah, for some years before returning to France in 2003. Latterly she had been suffering from cancer.

She and her daughter had reportedly been out of touch for many years. Her son survives her.