Sylvia Kristel, star of "Emmanuelle", dies.

[Los Angeles resident]

The Times of London, Thursday, October 18, 2012, 9:20am EDT

"EMMANUELLE" STAR SYLVIA KRISTEL DIES

By JAMES JACKSON, The Times of London

Sylvia Kristel, star of the 1974 erotic film "Emmanuelle", has died at 60.

Her agent said: “She died during the night during her sleep.” The Dutch actress had battled cancer for many years, and was admitted to hospital in July after a stroke.

Though she made nearly 60 films, she will forever be remembered for Emmanuelle. The softcore film, chronicling the affairs of a bored and sexually curious wife, became an X-rated sensation, running in one cinema in Paris for 11 years. Tourists flew to Paris from as far as Japan to see the boundary-pushing film, which took more than $50,000,000 in ticket sales worldwide.

The role, which demanded her to bare all, fake orgasms and romp with other women, instantly typecast her as an erotic superstar.

She appeared in a string of sequels and low-end rip-offs, calling her later films “rough, unseen, done for money”.

Her better known films included "Airport 79: The Concorde" (1979), "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" (1981) and "Mata Hari" (1985). She once said: “I learnt so much from other actors and they definitely didn’t treat me like some sex bomb or bimbo. I felt fully accepted in the regular movie world. I didn’t feel categorised.”

She sold her interest in the sex comedy "Private Lessons" (1982) to her agent for $150,000. The film went on to gross more than $25 million in America alone, and Kristel put her rash decision down to a cocaine habit. She later said of the drug: “Everyone takes it, including my doctor and lawyer. It was everywhere in those days.”

Her 2006 autobiography disclosed a string of disastrous high-profile relationships in the 1970s, her lovers including Gérard Depardieu, Warren Beatty, the film director Roger Vadim and the future "Lovejoy" star Ian McShane, with whom she had a turbulent four-year affair.

In the book she admitted that she was on a quest for a father figure. Born in 1952 to wealthy parents, Kristel had a strict upbringing in the Netherlands. She caught her father, a hotelier, in bed with another woman, and her parents divorced when she was 14. She also revealed that she was molested by the hotel manager.

After completing a convent-school education, assignments as a teenage model and bit-parts in long-forgotten films of the early Seventies followed. She won a Miss TV Europe competition in 1973, helping her to land the role of Emmanuelle when she was 22.

After her career in Hollywood hit the rocks in the late Eighties, she returned to Amsterdam, almost penniless, and started a career as a painter, with exhibitions in Brussels and Amsterdam. She continued to take small acting roles – including a return to the Emmanuelle franchise in 1993 – to shore up her income.

Kristel was a heavy smoker from the age of 11, and throat cancer was diagnosed in 2001. She underwent further battles with cancer of the lungs and liver.

She was married twice, briefly to an American businessman, then to the film producer Philippe Blot, and is survived by a son from a relationship with the Belgian artist Hugo Claus, who was 27 years her senior.

Copyright © 2012 Times Newspapers Limited



(Features Creative Management/Leoni Ravestein) This Feb. 26, 2008 photo shows actress Sylvia Kristel. The Dutch star of the hit 1970s erotic movie "Emmanuelle," has died of cancer at age 60. Her agent, Features Creative Management, said in a statement Thursday, Oct. 18, that Kristel died in her sleep Wednesday night. Kristel, a model who turned to acting in the 1970s, had been fighting cancer for several years.

[Dino Velvet]

Saw that earlier. I was a big fan of Sylvia's as a kid. RIP

[youngblood61]

Always enjoyed the Emmanuelle series. Very sexy Women RIP.

[Chaos]

First woman I ever lusted after in a movie... R.I.P.

[Cecil Rhodes]

I remember when she gave private lessons on sex to teenage boys before getting a job as a sex education teacher at a girls boarding school . Then ahe married Lee Jensen, father of one of her students, Jordan Leigh Jensen .

[danthepoetman]

She was so beautiful and feminine! The movies she was starring in were always absolutely ridiculous and terribly made. Yet you would watch them just because of her beauty, just because you would wait to have just a glimpse of her sex appeal and her beautiful body. Always terribly soft, erotic, terribly bad movies; but with such a lovely woman! This one saddens me.

[ed_jaxon]

I think guys here of a certain age appreciate what she meant to their teen years.

RIP

[Prospero]

Terrible films, beautiful girl. Sad to die so young. RIP

[DutchTSlover]

Fellow dutch person, RIP