Actor Alain Delon, enigmatic movie star, turns 80

To some he was the sexiest man of the 20th century, to others he is an egotistical cad. But as the actor Alain Delon turns 80 on Sunday, France still can't make up its mind about its greatest screen seducer.

As a slew of new French and Italian television documentaries puzzle over the enigmatic star, even Brigitte Bardot, one of Delon's oldest friends, has admitted she, too, has never quite solved the riddle.

"You are that eagle with two heads, the ying and the yang, the best and the worst," the 1960s film icon wrote in a birthday note to Delon seen by AFP. "You are inaccessible and yet so close, cold yet burning hot."