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

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

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 Samouraï and the historical epic The Leopard, that drew an estimated 134 million cinema-goers, making him a star at the box office. But today, aged 88, and severely diminished by a stroke five years ago, Delon is playing his final role in a real-life drama resonant of a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy as his three children, Anthony, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, squabble publicly in a destructive flurry of accusations and legal actions. The first salvo in the sibling war came earlier this month when Anthony, 59, whose mother Nathalie was Delon’s only wife, accused his half-sister, Anouchka, 33, daughter of Dutch model and journalist Rosalie van Breemen, of “lying” and “manipulation” for allegedly hiding the results of cognitive tests Swiss doctors had performed on their father.

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