Alain Delon and Romy Schneider

Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, 1963

“Romy and Alain’s love was an impossible love that consumed them, leading them to hurt each other deeply, with the world around them offering no support, only adding to their struggles…

…I had a brief affair With Delon, in 1964. he had just broken up with Romy, he was melancholy and eager to forget… he loved her whole his life... From there I followed him to Paris for a few weeks. It lasted a breath of time. That summer he got married, I consoled myself traveling around Europe with Friends…even though he's always had ups and downs and it’s not easy to be close to him. It’s as if his complicated childhood and adolescence had the power to resurface at any moment, disturbing the balance of the successful adult, in a continuous struggle with himself…

Delon sought to rekindle his relationship with Romy by making the film "La Piscine." For both of them, it was a way to revive a story that had captivated the world of cinema and resulted in a film that still speaks of jealousy and pain without losing any of its original power.

A few years after The Swimming Pool, I saw Romy again in the Capitale, discovering that the young girl who had been Sissi had become a more confident and sophisticated woman, terribly beautiful... Romy tried to seduce me, but not for a role of course, but simply because because she enjoyed seducing… once through our mutual friend, the designer Jil Sander, she had asked to meet me, but the great love story I was living with Florinda Bolkan (Brazilian actress) prevented me from pursuing her…

I would see her again much later, still with that persistent undercurrent of melancholy, as if she sensed that happiness was not her destiny. The same shadow of melancholy that I still see in Alain today. Perhaps, by bringing them together in the theater in that distant 1961, Luchino had sensed that, despite certain differences, their talent and personalities fused in the most natural way. And they always ended up seeking each other out again….”

From Alain Delon's personal notes in his theater programs (1996, 2005) and Romy's biography, (by Lelait Helo. 2017):

My Romy, darling, my love I miss you! My little doll I love you forever. alain. -

My beautiful angel, wherever you are, this night, as in the past, I'm with you,

forever. AL -

Johnny Hallyday, Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. 1960s

Alain Delon taking photographs of Romy Schneider. Côte d’Azur. In 1959 and in 1968