PARIS (AFP): An interview by the son of French film legend Alain Delon to a magazine has sparked open warfare in his family, with the screen legend immediately indicating he would file a complaint over his child’s comments.
Anthony Delon told the Paris Match weekly in an interview published Thursday that his father finds it hard to accept his frail state of health and accused his half-sister of leaving him vulnerable by concealing health problems.
Concern had grown about Delon’s health after the family published a picture of a Christmas Eve dinner showing the actor, who has been rarely seen in public in recent years, looking thin and weak.
In a “weakened” state Alain Delon, 88, “can no longer bear to see himself like that, diminished”, Anthony told Paris Match.
The star of classic films including “Swimming Pool”, “The Leopard” and “Purple Noon” suffered a severe stroke in July 2019 and now rarely leaves his estate in Douchy in France’s Loire region.
“He doesn’t speak much, it tires him or it annoys him when we make him repeat, because his voice is no longer always clear, or audible,” Anthony Delon said in the interview.
There are “major risks” that this was “his last Christmas”, he added.
But Alain Delon was “extremely shocked by the media outburst orchestrated by his son Anthony” and will file a complaint against him, his lawyer Christophe Ayela told AFP in a statement.
Alain Delon told him “he cannot stand the aggressiveness of his son Anthony who keeps telling him that he is senile”, and what is even “more shocking” is that his son “claims that he may have lived his last Christmas”.
The lawyer said Delon had asked him: “But what father could bear that?”
– ‘To harm the reputation’ –
There was already concern about the well-being of Alain Delon after his three children last year filed a complaint against his former live-in assistant Hiromi Rollin accusing her of harassment and threatening behaviour.
Anthony Delon also filed a second complaint accusing Rollin of violence and trying to sequester his father.
Rollin, who was evicted in July from the actor’s property, has written to prosecutors to dispute the accusations against her and also filed a complaint of her own.
French prosecutors on Thursday said no further action would be taken regarding any of the complaints, saying there was insufficient evidence to indicate any crime.
But in the interview, Anthony Delon, the son of Delon’s former wife Nathalie Delon, also revealed new strains within the family over the care of his father.
He said he had reported his younger half-sister Anouchka, the daughter of Alain Delon and Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen, to the police for failing to inform the family over his father’s performance in cognitive tests from 2019.
“My sister never informed my brother and me that between 2019 and 2022, my father had been subjected to five cognitive tests during his visits to the clinic in Switzerland and that he did not pass any of them,” he told the magazine.
The results showed “a cognitive degradation which places my father in a position of psychological weakness, and therefore of vulnerability,” he added.
Alain Delon’s lawyer said Anthony “has only one goal, to harm the reputation of his daughter Anouchka and the unique relationship that he has always had with Anouchka.”
Anthony Delon said day-to-day care of his father is now in the hands of his father’s youngest child Alain-Fabien Delon, whose mother is also Rosalie van Breemen and who published the family photo on his Instagram account.
