October Is Sylvia Kristel

Sylvia Kristel, 28 September, 1952 - 17 October, 2012

There can be few film leads so closely associated with one role as was the Dutch actress and model Sylvia Kristel, (28 September 1952 – 17 October 2012).The title role of the sexually adventurous housewife in Emmanuelle (1974) became a reference for every part she played subsequently.

Sylvia began modeling when she was seventeen. She entered the Miss TV Europe contest in 1973 and won. Multilingual, she spoke Dutch, English, French, German and Italian. She gained international attention in 1974 for playing the title character in the softcore film Emmanuelle which remains one of the most successful French films ever produced.

Sylvia was born in Utrecht, Netherlands, the elder daughter of an innkeeper, Jean-Nicholas Kristel, and his wife.In her 2006 autobiography, Nue, she claimed to have been 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 fourteen years old after her father abandoned the family for another woman. "It was the saddest thing that ever happened to me", she said about the experience of her parents' separation.

In the original Emmanuelle, Kristel portrayed the bored wife of a French embassy official in Bangkok, urged by her libertine husband to explore all the possibilities of sex. Lushly photographed and with a certain level of character development, its appeal went beyond the x rated films.Here Sylvia talking about the Emmanuelle phenomena:

According to the critic Roger Ebert: "She projects a certain vulnerability that makes several of the scenes work. The performers in most skin-flicks seem so impervious to ordinary mortal failings, so blasé in the face of the most outrageous sexual invention, that finally they just become cartoon characters. Kristel actually seems to be present in the film, and as absorbed in its revelations as we are." Her performances in several other films, with directors including Walerian Borowczyk, Claude Chabrol, Roger Vadim and Alain Robbe-Grillet, proved that she was worthy of better than most of the quickie tosh in which she appeared.

''Undressing Emmanuelle'' A Memoir' by Sylvia Kristel is a darkly discomforting read as suggested by reviewer Caroll Cadwallder in ''Observer On Sunday''.Caroll continues:

''The early chapters deal with her miserable childhood, her alcoholic parents, her mother's dislike of sex, her Catholic boarding school, her lecherous 'uncle' Hans, and the heartbreaking day her father brought home his mistress and announced he was leaving them....all in all, a strangely gripping tale. There's no bitterness or regret, and although there's a Francophone quality to the writing - the use of the present tense, short chapters and liberally sprinkled pensees - it gives the book a reflective edge that lifts it above the kind of celeb memoir commissioned here in Britain. This is the examined life.''


In September 2006 Kristel's autobiography Nue (Nude) was published in France. It was translated into English as Undressing Emmanuelle: A Memoir, in which she told of a turbulent personal life blighted by addictions to drugs, alcohol, and her quest for a father figure, which resulted in some harmful relationships with older men. The book received some positive reviews.

Emmanuelle 2 

Her first major relationship was with Belgian author Hugo Claus, more than a quarter century her senior, with whom she had a son, Arthur (born 1975). Kristel left her husband for British actor Ian McShane, a decade her senior, whom she had met on the set of the 1979 film The Fifth Musketeer. They moved in together in Los Angeles where he had promised to help her launch her American career. However their five year affair would lead 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". About two years into the relationship she began using cocaine. This proved to be her downfall, though 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."



Emmanuelle 1974

Interviewed in 2006 for the documentary Hunting Emmanuelle, she describes how, nurturing an expensive cocaine habit, she made a number of poor decisions, including selling her interest in Private Lessons to her agent for $150,000; the film would gross more than $26 million domestically. Since McShane, she married twice, first to an American businessman Alan Turner (m. 1982–1982)which ended after five months, and then to film producer Phillippe Blot  in 1986 which ended in 1991.     

Although Private Lessons was one of the highest grossing independent films of 1981 (ranking #28 in US Domestic Gross), Kristel reportedly saw none of the profits and continued to appear in movies and last played Emmanuelle in the early 1990s. In May 1990 she appeared in the television series My Riviera, filmed at her home in St Tropez and offering insights of her life and motivations in an interview with writer-director Michael Feeney Callan. In 2001, she played a small role in Forgive me, Dutch filmmaker Cyrus Frisch's debut. In May 2006, Kristel received an award at the Tribeca Film Festival, New York for directing the animated short film Topor and Me, written by Ruud Den Dryver. After a hiatus of eight years, she acted in the film, Two Sunny Days in 2010.

A heavy smoker of unfiltered cigarettes from the age of eleven, Sylvia was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001 and underwent three courses of chemotherapy, and surgery after the disease spread to her lungs.On 12 June 2012, she suffered a stroke and was hospitalized in a critical condition.She died in her sleep, aged 60, on 17 October 2012, from esophageal and lung cancer.She was survived by her son, Arthur Claus, and her younger sister, Marianne.

Choyon KH
19/10/12
Brittany, France