The actor Alain Delon will file a legal complaint against his son over “a media outburst” in France’s most prominent magazine, his lawyer has said.
In an interview published on Thursday, Anthony Delon told Paris Match that his father was finding it hard to accept his frail state of health, adding that there were “major risks” that the 88-year-old had celebrated “his last Christmas”.
“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. His father, he added, was in a “weakened” state and “can no longer bear to see himself like that, diminished”.
Within hours of the publication, however, Alain Delon issued a robust response through his lawyer Christophe Ayela. The actor was “extremely shocked by the media outburst orchestrated by his son Anthony”, Ayela told Agence France-Presse, and would file a legal complaint against him.
The star of films including Swimming Pool, The Leopard and Purple Noon had told him “he cannot stand the aggressiveness of his son Anthony who keeps telling him that he is senile”.
The lawyer said his client had asked him: “But what father could bear that?”
Alain Delon had a stroke in July 2019 and now rarely leaves his estate in Douchy in France’s Loire region. Concern had grown about his state of health after his family published a picture of a Christmas Eve dinner showing the actor looking thin and weak.
His wellbeing had already come into question last year after his three children filed a complaint against his former live-in assistant Hiromi Rollin, accusing her of harassment and threatening behaviour.
Rollin, who was evicted in July from the actor’s property, has written to prosecutors vehemently denying the accusations against her and has filed a legal complaint of her own.
French prosecutors said on Thursday no further action would be taken regarding any of the complaints, saying there was insufficient evidence to indicate any crime.
But in the Paris Match interview, Anthony, the son of Alain’s former wife, Nathalie Delon, spoke of new strains within the family over his father’s care.
He said he had reported his younger half-sister, Anouchka Delon, the daughter of Alain Delon and the Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen, to the police for allegedly 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 had “only one goal, to harm the reputation of his daughter Anouchka and the unique relationship that he has always had with Anouchka”.
Anouchka Delon’s lawyer had said she would file a complaint for defamation and harassment against her brother Anthony, Le Figaro reported on Thursday.
