Cinema isn’t a beauty contest, but if it were, Alain Delon surely would have won the title of the 1960s’ most handsome actor.

That’s a subjective call, of course, and as such, Delon is the kind of figure about whom writers tend to fall back on the word “arguably” — as in, “arguably the most handsome” — which is kind of a cop-out, as it leaves the argument to somebody else. When it comes to Delon, plenty have made the case. I loved Anthony Lane’s longform analysis of Delon’s allure in The New Yorker earlier this year. And none other than Jane Fonda, who co-starred with Delon in 1964’s “Joy House,” described him as “the most beautiful human being.”

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The French star, who died Sunday, made more than 100 movies in a career that spanned 50 years, but for that one transformative decade in film history — beginning with the Patricia Highsmith adaptation “Purple Noon” (“Plein Soleil”) in 1960 and stretching through to his iconic turn in Jacques Deray’s “La Piscine” — Delon came to represent an unattainable ideal, with his piercing wolf-blue eyes, Elvis Presley cheekbones and fit, ready-to-wrestle physique.

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But looks were only part of the equation. Given his own working-class background, Delon possessed a streetwise toughness from the start, but read as slightly puppy-like in his earliest roles (the eponymous Italian bruiser in Luchino Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers,” the amorous stockbroker in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’eclisse”).

It didn’t take him long to settle into the suave, disaffected air that became Delon’s signature. From his less-is-more acting style to the way he smoked a cigarette, casually dangling from his lips, the star conveyed that he didn’t care what others thought of him. And there’s nothing more impressive than a man who isn’t trying to impress.

Delon never asked to be an actor. According to a recent interview with Brigitte Auber, who was then a French starlet fresh off filming “To Catch a Thief” for Alfred Hitchcock, she picked him up one night, walking drunk on a Parisian bridge, and brought him back to her place. (It was the first of many love affairs........

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