The story of a passionate love affair.

EINE LIEBE IN PARIS: ROMY & ALAIN
(A Love in Paris: Romy and Alain)
by Thilo Wydra
Heyne, October 2020
(chez Verlagsgruppe Random House – voir catalogue)

Actors Romy Schneider and Alain Delon were the dream couple of the 1960s. They fell in love when they first met in Paris in 1958 on the set of the Arthur Schnitzler adaptation Christine, and their extraordinary roller-coaster affair would last five years. Four years later, they are reunited in front of the camera, playing lovers in the cult film The Swimming Pool, and thus begins a friendship that would last until Romy Schneider’s untimely and tragic death in 1982. When she died, it was Alain Delon who took care of everything. She was the love of his life: « Our love didn’t end. It changed. » To tell their story, the author and biographer Thilo Wydra has conducted countless in-depth interviews with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon’s friends and colleagues in France and Germany, among them Jane Birkin, Senta Berger, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Carrière, Michael Verhoeven, Volker Schlöndorff, and many others – and in their personal recollections the German-French lovers come alive once again.

Thilo Wydra, born in 1968, studied comparative studies, German, art history and film science. He has been freelancing as an author and journalist since the 1990s. In 1996 he became a member of the Verband der deutschen Filmkritik (VdFK) and has since then been on juries at international film festivals. He has authored numerous contributions to books on film and film lexica, writes for newspapers and magazines and has written biographies of Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly and others.