French animal charity Fondation Brigitte Bardot – named after the actress who famously starred alongside Delon in several films – said on X , externalthat “Loubo will of course not be euthanised” and that he “has a home and a family”.
The SPA stressed that it would be “happy to take his dog and find it a family”. There is no legislation in France which currently prohibits owners from putting down their pets.
Speaking to Paris Match six years ago, Delon said he wanted to be buried with his “end of life dog” that he loved “like a child”.
He added: “I’ve had 50 dogs in my life, but I have a special relationship with this one. He misses me when I’m not there. If I die before him I will ask the vet to let us go together. He will inject him so that he dies in my arms.
“I would rather that than knowing that he would let himself die on my grave with so much suffering.”
At least 35 of Delon’s dogs are known to have been buried in a chapel in a cemetery which the actor created in the grounds of his home, La Brulerie.
Delon starred in classics including The Samurai and Borsalino. He had been in poor health in recent years, with his final public appearance at Cannes Film Festival in May 2019, where he received an honorary Palme d’Or.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on X to “a French monument.”
“Alain Delon has played legendary roles and made the world dream,” he wrote. “Melancholic, popular, secretive, he was more than a star.”
Delon’s children announced the death on Sunday in a statement to the French national news agency Agence France-Presse, a common practice in France.
Tributes to Delon immediately started pouring in on social platforms, and all leading French media switched to full-fledged coverage of his rich career.
Earlier this year, his son Anthony had said his father had been diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma, a type of cancer.
At the prime of his career, in the 1960s and 1970s, Delon was sought out by some of the world’s top directors, from Luchino Visconti to Joseph Losey.
In his later years, Delon grew disillusioned with the movie industry, saying that money had killed the dream.
Writing in a 2003 edition of the newsweekly, Le Nouvel Observateur, he said:“Money, commerce and television have wrecked the dream machine. My cinema is dead. And me, too.”
