Sylvia Kristel in 1976, two years after "Emmanuelle" made her a worldwide sensation. The former actress died of cancer at age 60.
Sylvia Kristel, the Dutch actress who starred in the 1974 porn landmark "Emmanuelle," about a couple's erotic adventures in Thailand, has died of cancer at age 60, her agent tells Agence France Presse.
Kristel once told a Dutch newspaper that her boyfriend at the time convinced her to do the French film: “He said, `Thailand, that’s nice, we’ve never been there and anyway the film will never come out in the Netherlands so you won’t put your mother to shame. In the end, 350 million people saw it worldwide.”
A former model, Kristel also starred in three "Emmanuelle" sequels, and continued to act in erotic films to feed her drug and alcohol addiction. Kristel was "a wonderful woman, very pure, very innocent," her "Emmanuelle" director Just Jaeckin tells AFP. "But the mark that Emmanuelle left on her was very hard for her." He says he was aware that she had been struggling with cancer and was not expected to survive. "I'm also relieved that she no longer has to suffer."
She is survived by one son with her former partner Hugo Claus, a Belgian writer who died in 2008.
For more entertainment news and gossip, look for Vicki Hyman's column 'Vicki's Dish' Tuesdays-Saturdays in The Star-Ledger.
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