Dubbed "the male Brigitte Bardot," the French actor starred in 'The Leopard,' 'Le Samouraï,' 'The Red Circle' and as Tom Ripley in 'Purple Noon.

Alain Delon, the dark and dashing leading man from France who starred in some of the greatest European films of the 1960s and ’70s, has died. He was 88.

“Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as (his dog) Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” a statement from the family released to AFP news agency said.

Delon had been suffering from poor health in recent years and had a stroke in 2019.

With a filmography boasting such titles as Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and The Leopard (1963), René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Eclipse (1962), Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein (1976) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967) and The Red Circle (1970), Delon graced several art house movies now considered classics.

His tense and stoical performances, often as seductive men filled with inner turmoil, were marked by sudden outbursts of violence and emotion as well as an underlying ennui characteristic of French and Italian movies in the postwar era. He was often dubbed “the male Brigitte Bardot.”

Although he was a matinee idol in Europe, Delon never managed to become a star in Hollywood. He moved there in 1964, signing contracts with MGM and Columbia and making a total of six movies. But he failed to break through and left in 1967, soon to star in the crime flicks The Sicilian Clan (1969) and Borsalino (1970), both box office hits in France.