Sylvia Kristel

Sylvia Kristel — Biography

Dutch actress and model Sylvia Maria Kristel, eldest child of a family that ran a hotel, grew up partly in a boarding convent school and later wrote in her 2006 memoir Nue about being abused at nine and about her parents' divorce when she was fourteen. She began modeling at seventeen, won the 1973 "Miss TV Europe" contest, and shot to international fame playing the title role in the 1974 film Emmanuelle, adapted from Emmanuelle Arsan's novel, later reprising the character in sequels such as Emmanuelle 2 and Goodbye Emmanuelle. Typecast afterward in sexually charged parts including Private Lessons and Lady Chatterley's Lover, she also missed out on numerous high-profile roles over the years, from an early try-out for a leading Bertolucci role that went to Maria Schneider to parts in Superman and four James Bond productions, and appeared in Turkish director Sinan Çetin's Bank in 2002. Her private life included a son, Arthur, with Belgian writer Hugo Claus, relationships with actor Ian McShane and singer Michel Polnareff, and a marriage to businessman Alan Turner, alongside struggles with alcohol and cocaine that she later described in print. While being treated for throat and lung cancer, she was hospitalized in Amsterdam after a stroke in mid-2012 and died in her sleep on 17 October 2012, aged sixty.