Secret recordings and ‘dripping insinuations’: the bitter feud between French film star Alain Delon’s children

Now 88 and disabled by a stroke, the star leads a reclusive life and his children are in a bitter legal battle over his treatment

Alain Delon was among the greatest celebrities of the golden era of French cinema, with his brooding good looks, ice-blue eyes and seductive on- and off-screen presence making him the pin-up of postwar France.

In a career spanning more than half a century, Delon made 90 films, many of them critically acclaimed, including Plein Soleil (Purple Noon) in which he played antihero Tom Ripley, Le Samourai and the historical epic The Leopard, that drew an estimated 134 million cinema-goers, making him a star at the box office.