Sylvia Kristel (born September 28, 1952 in Utrecht, Netherlands) is a Dutch actress and model. She is the daughter of a Skeet shooting champion and she had a Catholic upbringing. When she was 17 she began modelling. She entered the Miss TV Europe contest, in 1973, and won. She speaks Dutch, English, French, German and Italian. Throughout the mid-1970s she dated Belgian writer Hugo Claus. She gained international attention in 1974 for playing the title character in the soft core film Emmanuelle which remains one of the most successful French films ever produced. Her surname is pronounced "kri-STELL".
Kristel found herself typecast as Emmanuelle and often played roles that capitalized upon that image, most notably starring in an adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover, and a nudity-filled biopic of World War I spy, Mata Hari, in which she played the title role. Her Emmanuelle image followed her to the United States where she played Nicole Mallow, a maid who seduces a teenage boy, in the controversial 1981 sex comedy Private Lessons. One of her only other mainstream American film appearances was a brief comic turn in the Get Smart revival film, The Nude Bomb in 1980. She continues to appear in movies, and last played Emmanuelle in the early 1990s. In 2002 she was treated for throat cancer, in 2004 for lung cancer.
Although Private Lessons was one of the highest grossing independent films of 1981 (ranking #28 in US Domestic Gross [1]), Kristel saw none of the profits. Interviewed in 2006 for Firecracker Films'[2] Documentary "Hunting Emmanuelle"[3], she describes how, nurturing an expensive cocaine habit, she made a number of poor decisions, including agreeing to sell her interest in the film to her agent on a whim for $150,000. With a domestic gross of over $26 million, she laughs at how much of her agent's mansion her percentage probably paid for. By contrast, with much of her Emmanuelle earnings flittered away on poor investments, she herself now lives a comparatively simple life back in Amsterdam, presently remaining single whilst mourning the death of her partner from cancer.
In September 2006, Sylvia Kristel's autobiography, Nue (Naked), was published in France.
Together with Claus, Kristel has a son named Arthur (°1975) , who is also an actor.
External links
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Interview in Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland
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Emmanuelle star publishes autobiography, The Sunday Times, September 3, 2006.
