Sylvia Maria Kristel (28 September 1952 – 17 October 2012)[3] was a Dutch model and actress who appeared in over 50 films. She is best remembered as the lead character in five of the seven Emmanuelle films.
Kristel was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands; she was the elder daughter of an innkeeper, Jean-Nicholas Kristel, and his wife Pietje Hendrika Lamme.[6][7] In her 2006 autobiography, Nue, she stated that she was sexually abused by an elderly hotel guest when she was nine years old, an experience she otherwise refused to discuss. Her parents divorced when she was 14 years old, after her father abandoned the family for another woman. "It was the saddest thing that ever happened to me", she said of the experience of her parents' separation.
In September 2006, Kristel's autobiography Nue (Nude) was published in France. The writing was translated into English as Undressing Emmanuelle: A Memoir, by Fourth Estate, 2 July 2007, in which she described a turbulent personal life that was blighted by addictions to drugs and alcohol, and her quest for a father figure, which resulted in some destructive relationships with older men. The book received some positive reviews.[11]
She had her first major relationship with Belgian author Hugo Claus, who was more than two decades her senior. The union produced her only child, a son named Arthur, who was born in 1975. She left her husband for British actor Ian McShane, whom she had met on the set of the film The Fifth Musketeer (1979).[12] They moved in together in Los Angeles, where he had promised to help her launch her American career. However, their five-year affair led to no significant career break for Kristel, but a relationship she describes in her autobiography as "awful – he was witty and charming, but we were too much alike." She began using cocaine about two years into the relationship. This proved her downfall, although at the time she thought of it as a "supervitamin, a very fashionable substance, without danger, but expensive, far more exciting than drowning in alcohol – a fuel necessary to stay in the swing."[13] Sylvia Kristel also had a relationship with French singer Michel Polnareff.[14]
Kristel was interviewed in 2006 for the documentary Hunting Emmanuelle. She described how she made a number of poor decisions due to an expensive cocaine addiction. One of those decisions included selling her interest in Private Lessons to her agent for US$150,000; the film grossed more than US$26 million domestically. After McShane, she married twice, first to Alan Turner, an American businessman. That marriage ended after five months, and she later married film producer Philippe Blot. She spent a decade with Belgian radio producer Fred De Vree, until his death.
Sylvia Kristel was born on September 28, 1952 in Utrecht, Netherlands. She first came to international attention in the early 1970s with Emmanuelle (1974) for director Just Jaeckin. Then two more sequels followed in which she also starred. Included in her credits are a long list of European films including the film Es war nicht die Nachtigall (1974), in which she played the lead. In 1979, she came to Hollywood, appearing in Aeropuerto 80 (1979) for producer Jennings Lang, who also featured her in the comedy film El disparatado agente 86 (1980). However, this was all a prelude to the most successful film in Kristel's career -- La primera lección (1981) -- in which she played the housekeeper who initiates 15-year-old Eric Brown to the wonders of sex. The film grossed over $50,000,000 worldwide. The Dutch actress, who speaks four languages (Dutch, English, Italian and French), now made her home in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Sylvia Kristel died at age 60 of cancer in her sleep on October 18, 2012.
