French actor and heartthrob Alain Delon in interviews

FRANCE 24 English

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00:00What I am is an accident. I've been placed in an orbit, and I have to stay there and just be.

00:06All of a sudden, they put a label on you, and you're Delon.

00:10Delon has always had the poison assurance of someone who knew he was admired.

00:15People are going to say I'm talking in the third person again, but it's true.

00:19Delon can do Mr. Klein, Delon can also do another story,

00:22but it doesn't change anything in his career because Klein was a prestigious cinematic success.

00:27No one could speak about Alain Delon better than Delon himself, about his childhood for example.

00:33Very quickly and very early on, I was alone fighting against the elements, against life,

00:39against people, against the difficulties of life.

00:42And perhaps that's what marked me, and perhaps that's why,

00:45for people I still carry scars of which we don't know the origin.

00:49Delon often came across as a tormented soul.

00:54I immediately became an important actor, quickly became a celebrity, and after that, a star.

00:59I didn't have time to build myself.

01:01And what I always wanted to say is that deep down, I'm not made for this job.

01:05And I never was. In fact, I don't know what I'm made for.

01:10One thing he was almost born to do was charm. He always knew how to seduce an audience.

01:17So again you played the role of a handsome man with a pistol.

01:21Handsome man? That's for sure.

01:24I can't disagree with you on that.

01:28I know that I can seduce, that I can charm. I'm aware of it, but I don't use it.

01:33I'm not a flirt. I'm not a charmer.

01:35I've never known how to approach a woman on the street that I like.

01:39I've been lucky enough to have been surrounded with beautiful women all my life.

01:43Often mocked for the size of his ego, the actor also knew a thing or two about self-deprecation.

01:50My dear Mr Pivot, I was already a samurai.

01:55An actor perfectly aware of the mark he would leave on the cinema landscape.

02:01I'm proud of what I've done. I'm proud of my career because I think that I've been important.

02:06I think I count. I think I'm inextricable from the history of French cinema.

02:11Probably also from the history of European cinema and perhaps also even in the history of world cinema.

02:19World cinema.

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