Nathalie Delon (born Francine Canovas, also known as Nathalie Barthélémy; 1 August 1941 – 21 January 2021) was a French actress, model, film director and writer.^[1]She is well known for her first acting role, appearing opposite her husband, actor Alain Delon, in the neo-noir film Le Samouraï directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (1967). She appeared in 30 films and directed two others.

Francine Canovas was born on 1 August 1941 in Oujda,^[2] then under the French Protectorate in Morocco to a French family of Italian-Spanish origin.^[3] She was the daughter of Louis Canovas (1915–2003), pied-noir of Oran (Algeria), manager of a transport company in Morocco, who abandoned the family when she was 8 months old in 1942^[4] and Antoinette Rodriguez, who was from Melilla.^[5] Nathalie had a sister, Louisette, and a brother.

In 1957,^[6] Nathalie got married for the first time to a conscript from the north of France, Guy Barthélémy, who later became the signing officer for Omnium Marocain d'Assurance. They lived in Morocco and had a daughter named Nathalie Barthélémy. They broke up in 1960 and she moved to Paris in 1961.^[7] Their divorce was granted in July 1964.

In May 1963, Nathalie accompanied Delon to the shoot of his new film La Tulipe Noire.^[8] In April 1964 they got engaged and on 13 August 1964, Nathalie and Alain married in Loir-et-Cher. Their son, Anthony Delon, was born on September 30, 1964, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The couple divorced on 14 February 1969. They worked together on two films: Le Samouraï (while they were married) and Doucement les Basses (some years after their separation).

During the 1960s and 1970s she dated Bobby Keys, Marc Porel, Eddie Fisher, Renaud Verley, Louis Malle, and Franco Nero, among others. Her greatest love was Chris Blackwell, with whom she was with for 15 years (1978–1993).

During the 1960s, Nathalie Delon was a model. She was photographed by top French and foreign photographers for famous magazines such as Vogue.

In 1967, Nathalie became a film actress, starring opposite her husband in the film Le Samouraï by Jean-Pierre Melville, which became a hit.^[3] Writing of the Delons' performances in Le Figaro, Bertrand Guyard notes husband and wife are both nearly silent but "their gazes, fraught with meaning, are enough to thrill the camera" with the director drawing from their portrayals "a mythical couple in the seventh art."^[4]

Afterwards, Nathalie Delon continued her acting career until the 1980s. In 1968 she appeared in The Private Lesson, which made her a star in Japan, ranking her in the top 10 of foreign actresses. In 1971, she appeared in When Eight Bells Toll with Anthony Hopkins and in 1972 she appeared in The Monk with Franco Nero. In 1973, she acted in Le Sex Shop, and her role was one of the film's "moments of real pleasure, as one of its "really marvelous girls", commented Roger Greenspun in The New York Times.^[9]

In addition to acting in 30 films during her career, she directed two: one was the story—also written by Delon—of a mother whose son dies in surgery, Ils appellent ça un accident [fr] (transl. They Call It an Accident) in 1982, and the other was Sweet Lies in 1988.^[10]

In 2006, Delon published a memoir, Pleure pas, c'est pas grave (Don't cry, it's okay). Le Figaro described it as an account of "her darker period, her marriage to Delon, her descent into hell with drugs. But still full of life, she also recounts the exceptional encounters she has had with people who made her laugh and who make us laugh too. Delightful and entertaining anecdotes".^[11]

Nathalie Delon died at the age of 79 in Paris on 21 January 2021 from pancreatic cancer.^[12][13]