The erotic movie star of the 70s never managed to answer the main question of her life: what is Emanuela’s role for her, luck or curse?
Sylvia Kristel became a star overnight. But unfortunately during her future career, especially in America, “I had to struggle to keep my clothes on …”
In her memoirs, Sylvia admits: “The role I dreamed of, as a stepping stone, bound me forever. My body became more important than my words. I became an actress in silent films, devoid of all that. it forms an individuality, “the star confessed in an interview.
It’s been 10 years since the actress died.
Sylvia Christel played her first film roles in 1973. And a year later, she was invited for the lead role by first-time director Just Jaquin for “Emanuela”. All the actresses she approaches after reading the script categorically refuse. However, Silvia agrees.
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He accepts, especially since the shooting is in Thailand, and finds a free vacation to this exotic destination rather tempting …
The reality deviates from his expectations: before each camera, he drinks a glass of champagne to appear more relaxed in the “naked” scenes, and on special occasions he even has to smoke marijuana.
Initially, the film was banned because it was too “candid”, but after the change of the ruling elite, “Emanuela” was released anyway. The critics are tearing the film apart, but the audience, on the contrary, is ecstatic, lining up in front of the cinemas in long lines of kilometers.
Stunned by success, she does not immediately realize that she has become hostage to a single role. Subsequently she Silvia participated in numerous sequels to “Emanuela”.
Since childhood she has been distinguished by intelligence (its coefficient is 145), but also by beauty. However, her intelligence allows her to “take” 4 school years in one …
Sylvia Maria Kristel was born on September 28, 1952 in Utrecht, the Netherlands
He left this world in his sleep on October 17, 2012.
She is the eldest daughter of a roadside restaurant owner Jean-Nicolas Christel and his wife Pietier Hendrica Lame. In her 2006 autobiography, Nue, she admits she was sexually abused by an elderly hotel guest when she was nine, an experience she refuses to discuss further. Her parents divorced her when she was 14 after her father abandoned the family for another woman.
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“My father brought a new woman into the hotel, which was our home, which he ran with my mother.” My sister, my mother and I were thrown out of room 21, where we lived, “she said in an interview. .
“It was the saddest thing that ever happened to me,” he admits frankly about the experience.
Sylvia is sent to a Catholic boarding school, but they cannot correct her complex nature there. A few years later, she is determined to become famous, at any cost.
Kristel started modeling when she was 17. In 1971, she auditioned for the lead female role in The Last Tango in Paris (1972), but she lost to Maria Schneider. In 1973 she won the Miss TV Europe contest. She is fluent in Dutch, English, German and Italian, as well as a few other languages that she is not so good at.
World fame came to her a year later, when director Just Jacqueline shot Christel in the lead role in one of the most successful films in the entire history of the French film industry. “Emanuela” is one of the first erotic films released in traditional cinemas. It has been seen by 9 million viewers in France alone and has become a hit in many other countries around the world.
After Emmanuelle’s success, Christel often played roles influenced by this sexually provocative image, most notably in the adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1981) and the spy biopic Mata Hari (1985) of the First World War.
In the 1970s, he starred in lesser-known films by prominent French directors, including Claude Chabrol and Roger Vadim. You starred with Joe Dalesandro in Valerian Borowczyk’s “La Marge”, which achieved success at the French box office.
She was initially cast as Stella in Roman Polanski’s The Tenant (1976), but on the first day she was replaced by Isabel Adjani.
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In 1977, she was cast as Hattie in Louis Malle’s controversial erotic drama Pretty Baby (1978), but the role ultimately went to Susan Sarandon. She was friends with Sergio Leone, who wanted her to play the role of Carol in Once Upon a Time in America (1984), but the producers disagreed and the role went to Tusdy Weld.
In 1982, she was turned down by Tony Scott for the role of Miriam in The Hunger (1983) and Catherine Deneuve played the role. Kristel also lost the role of Lois Lane in Superman (1978), which went to Margot Kidder. Sylvia also failed auditions for the role of a Bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Octopuses (1983).
Christel turned down female lead roles in The Story of Adele H. (1975), King Kong (1976), Logan’s Run (1976), Caligula (1979), Body Heat (1981), Blade Runner (1982), Scarface ( 1983)., Dune (1984), Body Double (1984) and Blue Velvet (1986).
Emanuela’s image also haunted her in the United States, where she played Nicole Mallow, a waitress who seduces a teenager in the sex comedy Private Lessons (1981).
Although “Private Lessons” was one of the highest-grossing independent films of 1981 (28th in US gross), Christel admits he hasn’t seen any of the profits. In May 1990 she appeared in the television series My Riviera, which was filmed in her home in Saint Tropez.
Her friend Gerard Depardieu wants to ensure her return and is trying to persuade the producers of “1492: The Conquest of Paradise” to entrust her with the role of Queen Isabella. But failed.
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In 2001, he played a small role in Forgive Me, the debut of Dutch director Cyrus Frisch. In May 2006, Christel received an award at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York for directing the animated short Topor and Me with screenwriter Ruud Den Driver. The award was presented by Gayle King.
After an eight-year hiatus, Christel appeared in the film Two Sunny Days (2010) and in the same year, in her last acting role, she played Eva de Loew in the Italian television film The Swing Girls.
In June 2021, it was announced that actress Sylvia Hooks would play Sylvia Christel in a biopic about her life and career.
In 2006, Kristel remembered herself again by publishing the candid autobiography Nue. In it, she talks about her about her numerous movie lovers and her addiction to alcohol and cocaine at the peak of her career.
Her first long-term relationship was with Belgian writer Hugo Klaus, who had more than two decades of her. She is the father of her only child, a son named Arthur, born in 1975. She left her husband for British actor Ian McShane, whom she met on the set of The Fifth Musketeer (1979). They move to Los Angeles, where she has promised to help her launch her American career.
Their five-year relationship was described by Christel in his autobiography as “terrible – it was witty and charming, but we were too alike”. He is addicted to cocaine. At the time, he considered it “a supervitamin, a very modern, safe but expensive substance, far more exciting than drowning in alcohol: the fuel you need to stay in the game.” Sylvia Christel is also in a relationship with French singer Michel Polnaref.
She was interviewed in 2006 for the documentary Hunting Emmanuelle. She describes how she made a series of terrible decisions due to addiction to expensive cocaine.
After McShane, she married twice. Kristel marries American millionaire Alan Turner, which ends after five months. Her second husband, future director Philip Blot, makes her finance her films, which are a total disaster. Kristel says she will leave this marriage with $ 400 in her name.
Among Sylvia’s lovers, the most famous is the French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
Christel stopped appearing naked on screen in the 1980s due to her son Artur, who was worried about her at school.
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The actress rarely sees her son. Only in 2003, when the doctors gave Silvia the fatal diagnosis, did they get closer.
She returns in the “Emanuela” series in 1994, in which she appears fully dressed, recalling the “exploits” of her youthful alter ego.
Her licensed biography was written by Dutch journalist Suzanne Retans and was released in September 2019. It took Retans more than three years. Not yet translated into English.
After leaving America, he retired to southern France to paint, mainly female portraits and roses.
Kristel has been an extremely heavy smoker since the age of 11. She was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001 and she underwent three courses of chemotherapy, undergoing surgery after the disease spread to her lungs. On 12 June 2012 she had a stroke and was hospitalized in critical condition. Four months later, she died in her sleep at the age of 60 from esophageal and lung cancer.
“She died during the night in her sleep,” reports her agent Marieke Verharen.
Collage: Petya Alexandrova, Dir.bg/Photos: Getty Images
Christel is buried in her hometown of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
The last film the Dutch actress starred in was the Croatian “Two Sunny Days” in 2010, two years before her death. Film director Ognen Costricic admits: “Silvia was a much better actress than she was able to show.
She was very warm on set, she was very nice … “
