The woman who was catapulted into the spotlight after starring in an iconic erotic film led a life even more chaotic than the famous character she portrayed. Sylvia Kristel was the star of the smash hit movie Emmanuelle, about a young woman who went to Bangkok to explore her sexuality. It was so controversial when it was released in June 1974 that people in Spain were banned from seeing it.
And 50 years on, it has now been remade in a “revised tale of Emmanuelle’s sexual awakening, with a feminist twist”. But the original Emmanuelle will not be around to see the remake after she died aged 60 back in 2012 - and below we look inside her tragic life. Syliva was born in Utrecht, Netherlands, to parents who were both alcoholics, and addiction issues would later damage her own life.
She had an unusual upbringing and lived alongside her sister in a hotel that her mum and dad owned. And in 2006, she revealed in her autobiography Neu that she was sexually assaulted by the hotel manager when she was just nine. Her aunt walked in on the assault and the man, who she referred to as Uncle Hans, was fired.
She wrote about feeling a “tinge of regret” and that she worried the punishment was “too harsh, more than I am worth?” As for substance abuse, Syliva once tried to total up how many glasses of beer her father was drinking in a day and stopped counting after 40. And she herself was consuming booze (and cigarettes) at a young age, something she did not find strange until she w.
