PARIS: The French actress Nathalie Delon - once regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world - died of cancer on Thursday, her son told AFP on Thursday.

"My mother died this morning at 11 am in Paris, surrounded by her family and friends," actor Anthony Delon said. "She died from a very fast cancer," he told AFP. She was 79.

Delon shot to international fame in 1967 in the hitman flick "Le Samourai" - now hailed as a classic - opposite her then husband, the French screen legend Alain Delon.

But the actress - who was born Francine Canovas to a Spanish family in Morocco - was already a star of the gossip columns as the woman who lured Delon away from his longtime lover, film star Romy Schneider.