Alain Delon. Goodbye premeditated

Actor Anthony Delon, 57, son of French cinema legend Alain Delon, revealed last week that his father, who turned 86 in November, voluntarily decided to end his life.

According to him, in an interview with the French magazine Le Point, on the eve of the release of his autobiography Entre chien et Loup, in Portuguese Entre Cão e Lobo – in which he recalls episodes from his childhood and discusses his relationship with his parents – Alain has lived in Switzerland since 1978, where medical-assisted suicide is considered an order Legally, and it was he himself who was asked to organize the whole process and accompany him in the last moments of his life. The order will follow what Anthony did with his mother.

The actor took care of Nathalie Delon, Delon’s ex-wife, on his “last extension”. The French actress also died in January 2021 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 79. “Yes, I accompanied my mother. And it is true that she decided to die as she lives, that is, when she decided, she chose euthanasia,” Anthony explained, on RTL radio, on March 13. Despite dealing with the entire procedure and feeling ready for it, it wasn’t necessary to do this: “Fortunately, we didn’t resort to the procedure. I say happily, because everything was ready. We had the person to do it.”

Alain Delon, without fear of death, announced the end of his career in 2017. Two years later he had a double stroke and, on several occasions, expressed his support for the process. “I am in favor of medically assisted death. First, because I live in Switzerland, where the procedure is legal, and also because I think it is the most logical and natural thing to do,” the artist said in an interview with a Swiss TV channel. “From a certain age, from a certain moment, a person has the right to” leave “quietly, without going through hospitals, injections and the rest,” the artist explained. In the same interview, the actor said that he already had his will ready, sharing his definite inheritance.

After suffering a double stroke, Dillon slowly recovered and is already feeling much better, although he had to walk with a stick, but that didn’t seem to be enough for him to maintain the will to live. “Growing is disgusting!” He admitted shortly before he was hospitalized that year. “We can’t do anything. Lose your face, your vision. Wake up with your ankle hurting.”

When he was 82 years old, for Paris Match magazine, the actor had already told his “relationship” with death and admitted that his funeral had already been organized. “I’m not afraid of death,” he told journalist Valerie Trierweiler. At the time, his fear was basically dying in front of his dog Lobo: “He’s my dog ​​until the end of his life. A Belgian Shepherd I loved when I was a kid,” he said. “If he dies before me, he can’t take it anymore (…) If I die before him, I’ll ask the vet to come with me. He’ll sting him until he dies in my arms. I’d rather know that he’d let himself die in my grave with so much suffering.”

At his home in Douchy, a 55-hectare estate located in Loiret, Delon revealed that he had already planned to bury him in the chapel, near 50 tombs for his dogs: “There are five places planned around her vault, and it is behind the altar. Let’s see who will join me later,” As he described, adding that he only wanted about fifteen of his relatives to attend the ceremony.

After his son’s recent statements to the French media, the artist was keen to clarify his decision on his official personal account on Instagram to die through assisted suicide. “I made my decision a long time ago, and I think my life has been beautiful, but also difficult,” he wrote on the social network. Dillon used this post to reinforce the way he approaches aging: “I’ve never liked getting older, all these pains and challenges that we have to face every day that end up leaving me immobile in the face of it all,” he explained.

Medically assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since 1942. Contrary to what many people think, this type of procedure is different from unauthorized euthanasia in the country. The main difference between the techniques is who performs the “final act”. In euthanasia, another person takes action to end someone’s life and thus stop their suffering, even at the patient’s request. In assisted suicide, another person helps someone commit suicide. In this case, the patient undergoes the process of taking the fatal drug. Those who help a person die do not need to be doctors, but help must be motivated by “altruism.” Under Swiss law, you do not have to be terminally ill to be able to apply for a so-called voluntary death. However, you must be of sound mind and have expressed your constant desire to end your life.

wasted childhood According to Le Point, “Between Dog and Wolf by Anthony Delon” is “a cry of love that balances all accounts.” Mostly because, apparently, the actor had a turbulent relationship with his father during his youth. “Since I was ten, my father has tried many times to make me inferior and weak, which is the age at which I became a man, he said,” he explains in the pages of his autobiography. “I don’t think he wanted to destroy me. I wanted to subdue myself. Like in the pack, where the clan must bow to the leader. But whether it was conscious or unconscious, the destruction was in the workplace,” he recalls, later referring to a more violent case. I had it during one of the meals they ate as a family.

“After two or three attention calls, a sudden rage seized me, grabbed my plate and threw it out the window. Work accompanied: “Go to your room!” But the nightmare was not over yet. According to Anthony, Alan took out his large whip. “I don’t remember any pain. My body, but the words left big wounds that took so long to heal: between blows he said to me: “I didn’t hit my dog ​​with that whip!”, said the artist. One of the other moments that the artist reveals in the book was the night when Alan, at the age of twelve, wanted to test his courage: “Prove to me that you have balls, go around the lake in the dark,” he demanded. He knew very well that I was afraid of the dark, not to mention that the lake was 300 meters from the house, in the middle of the 5-hectare forest. Getting around it was the equivalent of walking for 25 minutes in the cold of winter on a dark night,” he wrote in the book.

At the age of 15, after the divorce of his parents, the actor decided to move to live with his mother, which in the eyes of Alain was a betrayal. Hearing him in court, he said, his father threw himself at him, “I can still hear my mother screaming his name as she pulls him by the shoulders back and squeezes my throat and I can’t breathe.” He remembers.

In 1982, when he learned that Mitsubishi had invited his son to promote the brand, Allan said, “If you do, you will have an enemy on earth, your father!” , as revealed by Anthony, who later clarified, after looking “a step back”. “I wasn’t afraid of the possibility of a conflict, but the idea of ​​letting him go got hold of me,” he admits. The artist also reveals his belief that watching him grow up, watching the climax of his life, created a feeling of jealousy and deep frustration on the part of his father, because at that time he no longer went again.

The artist believes, however, that his father wanted him, wanted him, and loved him madly until he was four years old, when Natalie left him. It took all these years for the two to talk and respect each other. In addition, she revealed that before her death, Natalie gave her ex-husband one last message in front of the camera with which her son was filming a documentary: “Alan, I’m leaving. Love your son as I love him. Forget the differences! And the wounds seem to have already healed. Anthony realizes today That the time of disagreements with his father is over, explaining that “characters have always asserted themselves in the family.” “He has distanced himself so much from this, from our past, from these struggles, we are at peace with everything!” he told RTL, specifying that his father Read the book before publishing.

Considered a legend of French and European cinema, Alain Delon has starred in around 80 films during the half-century that has continued his career. It was directed by great filmmakers such as Jean-Pierre Melville, Luchino Visconti, Joseph Lucy, or Michelangelo Antonioni. He played significant roles in The Sun as Aitness, in 1960, Rocco and His Brothers, in 1961, The Leopard, in 1963, and The Samurai, in 1968, among many others. Asterix at the Olympics was his last film in 2008.