Inside tragic life of world’s first ‘soft porn’ star Sylvia Kristel…drug abuse, violent marriage & Emmanuelle rape row

SHE was the star of legendary movie Emmanuelle - a film so raunchy it was dubbed 'soft porn' and Spaniards banned from seeing it flocked to France to watch it.

But away from the big screen the life of Sylvia Kristel is far more controversial than anything in her films. 

From childhood sexual abuse to financial ruin and devastating drug abuse, the Dutch actress suffered trauma throughout her life.

And most tragic of all, despite hoping Emmanuelle would launch a career in Hollywood, she found herself frequently turned down for top roles and instead became known for stripping off in another 40 X-rated flicks.

She said: “I thought Hollywood was waiting for me. It was not - and I had to fight to keep my clothes on.”

Iconic movie Emmanuelle tells the adventure of a young French girl played by a 21-year old Silvia who travels to Thailand in a trip filled with steamy sexual encounters.

Fifty years on, the film has been remade by director Audrey Diwan, with French actress Noemie Merlant playing the role of the young girl who this time seeks erotic escapism in Hong Kong.

Having premiered at the San Sebastian International Film festival in Spain over the weekend, the film has not been a hit with critics, with Variety calling it “one big anti-climax”.

The original film - directed by French director Just Jaekin - launched the soft-porn genre into the mainstream.

It attracted millions of viewers, enticed by titillating posters showing pearls dangling down a semi-nude Sylvia. 

While film censors were less than impressed, in France the film achieved an incredible 8.9 million admissions - more than films such as The Great Escape, West Side Story or modern classic Amélie - and was shown in one cinema on the Champs-Élysées for thirteen years.

It was a hit abroad too, earning nearly £7million in Japan and becoming a number 4 hit at the UK box office the year it was released. 

Alcoholic parents

Born in Utrecht, in The Netherlands, Sylvia grew up in a hotel owned by her parents alongside her younger sister, Marianne.

Her father, John, had gone deaf from clay-pigeon shooting and he and mum Pete were both alcoholics.

One night she counted up how many glasses of beer her father put away in a day - but stopped counting after 40.

Sylvia herself was no stranger to drinking at a young age and said she didn't realise it was unusual until she went to boarding school at 11.

In an interview with the Independent she said: “On my first night [of boarding school] I could not sleep so I asked Sister Assassia for a cognac. She said ‘You must be joking!’.

“It was the first time I’d ever been refused. At the hotel, when I couldn’t sleep, I would always serve myself a cognac.

"Before I was weaned, my mother got me to sleep by putting a cognac-soaked cloth wrapped around a lump of sugar to my lips.”

In her 2006 autobiography Neu, she revealed that aged nine she was sexually abused by an elderly guest in the hotel - although she has refused to ever discuss the incident.

At the age of 14, her parents divorced, saying “it was the saddest thing that ever happened to me.”

Her father had returned to the hotel with another woman one day and introduced her as his next wife - and kicked out Sylvia and her mother and sister.

I want my father to see me - to see this exquisite bird he let escape

Sylvia Krystel

“It was as if we were staff and he had dismissed us,” she said. 

On the one occasion after this incident she tried to return to the hotel, she was barred from entering by the new wife.

After stints as a secretary and a waitress, Sylvia started modelling at 17 and went on to win Miss TV Europe only a few years later.

At the moment she was crowned at the ceremony in London, her mind went straight to the moment her father left their family. 

In her autobiography, she writes her first thought was: “I want my father to see me - to see this exquisite bird he let escape.” 

Drug-fueled marriage

The fame that came with winning Miss TV Europe soon found her plenty of attention from the opposite gender.

Her first romance was with Dutch writer Hugo Claus, a man 24 years her senior. 

Unsurprisingly, this age gap has prompted questions about whether the relationship with her father left a hole that she tried to fill with relationships. 

She said to the Independent: “Was I looking for a father? Maybe in my subconscious I was, but Hugo was not a father figure, he was a great lover.

“He was older, that is true - but he was very boyish and athletic and did karate every day.”

It was with Hugo that she had her only child, Arthur, who was born in 1975. 

But it wasn’t to last. 

To many the devil is beautiful, and my attraction to Ian overwhelmed me

Sylvia

Not long after the birth of her son, she met British actor Ian McShane - ten years her senior - on the set of The Fifth Musketeer.

Sylvia recalls the moment she first met him: “He had a Greek nose and big, bright glittering eyes. His smile wasn't an innocent smile though - it was as if I was his prey and he had wolf's teeth."

"But to many the devil is beautiful and my attraction to Ian overwhelmed me."

High off the success and lifestyle brought by Emmanuelle, his promises to take her to Hollywood and make her big in America led her to leave Hugo. 

She stayed with Ian for five years - but describes her decision to move to Los Angeles with him “the dumbest thing she ever did.”

And in her autobiography, she describes the relationship as “awful - he was witty and charming but we were too much alike.”

Frustrated with a lack of career success and troubled by drink and drugs, McShane would explode in fits of wild rage - often directed towards Sylvia.

He once screamed at her: “You aren't an actress. All you've got is a beautiful bottom and some luck!”

Their fights would even descend into violence on both sides. 

Speaking to the Evening Standard, she said: “We screamed, we cried, broke ornaments - we played a tragedy.

“Sometimes, he would stop himself as if to say 'cut' like a director. He would put his arms around my waist, turn me around and say I was beautiful.

“He would hug and caress me. ‘Forgive me, forgive me my beauty’, he would say.”

On one evening, she attended a gala in Malibu alongside Ian.

Keen to make an impact, Sylvia got done up with the help of a hairdresser and make-up artist.

But Ian - who had told her not to dress up - reacted viciously.

“He gave me a hostile look - then he picked up a bucket of champagne and threw it at my head. We started hitting each other ferociously.”

Cocaine abuse & miscarriage

Sylvia was living the high-life, attending A-list parties where she would “snort, drink, slip on my silk-lined Chanel clothes and fall over.”

Two years into her relationship with Ian, she developed a cocaine habit that began costing her £400 a week.

She said: “Cocaine seemed to be the opposite of a drug, 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.”

It was to be the start of a downward spiral that would end in tragedy and ruin.

Although she briefly returned to her family in Utrecht after the fight in Malibu, Sylvia couldn’t help but return to Ian - and discovered she was three months pregnant.

Ian, however, “just wasn’t interested,”, and while she gave up drinking, he continued as normal - even egging her to drink - and the fights didn’t stop.

But Sylvia tragically lost the baby after suffering a fall.

In the hospital, she heard from Ian that he couldn’t visit. He was at a party.

It was to prove the nail in their relationship, despite his begging - but this time she couldn’t forgive him.

Life is difficult if you were once a love goddess

Sylvia

Yet although Ian was out of the picture at last, her cocaine habit remained costly.

In 1981, she starred in the raunchy sex-comedy Private Lessons, which went on to be the one of the top grossing independent films of the year.

Desperate for cash, she sold her interest in the film to her agent for $150,000 (£112,000)

The film went on to gross £20 million - but she saw none of it.

Eventually, she had a wake up call when her doctor told her that her liver was close to failing and her accountant told her she faced a choice between keeping her house or the cocaine.

She chose the house but has since said it took her six years to stop thinking about the drug.

Brutal divorces

After her relationship with Ian ended, she remarried in 1982 to Alan Turner, an American businessman, but separated only five months after.

In 1986 she married Philippe Blot, a film producer.

He persuaded Sylvia to finance his films - a move which left her financially ruined.

One film she financed was described by critics as “the worst film ever made” and left her bankrupt and being chased by bailiffs for years.

She said to the Independent: “A-list stars now make zillions but my biggest fee was like $300,000.

“If I had been more prudent and hadn't been partying so much, I guess it would have lasted a bit longer – but what really did me in was Philippe.”

After separating from Philippe, she spent a decade with Belgian radio DJ Fred De Vree, who passed suddenly in 2004. 

The panel is bowled over - some of them even have the tips of their tongues hanging out

Sylvia, on her audition for Emmanuelle

Speaking to the Evening Standard in 2012, she said that she was “still mourning” for him and wasn’t looking to remarry. 

"Life is difficult if you were once a love goddess, “ she added.

Rape scene row

Despite starring in dozens of other films, Emmanuelle will always be the film Sylvia is best remembered for, as it went on to not only launch, but define, the rest of her career.

She even claims to have gotten the role by accident, after going through the wrong door while auditioning for a commercial and being asked to disrobe by the film’s director, Just Jaeckin.

Describing the audition in her book, she said: “I take advantage of a boring question about my education to roll my shoulder slowly forward until one strap falls, then the other. 

“My apparent relaxation gives the impression that my body is still dressed, although it is right here, in front of them, exposed, naked.

“The panel is bowled over - some of them even have the tips of their tongues hanging out.”

The film certainly featured plenty of sex, including lesbian romances and romps with older men, and played up to the then-new ideas of female sexual liberation.

But the feminist credentials of the film are dubious, at best.

In one scene, Emmanuelle is forced by an older man to have sex with two young Thai men in an opium den. 

Later on, she’s given to the victor of a boxing match as a prize - again with no say in the matter.

She tried to persuade the director that a scene showing her being raped was in no way liberating for the female character - but it was in vain. 

“It was very hard to explain that to a male director,” she said, adding that Jaeckin dismissed her concerns because he wanted to shoot it as the book described. 

My body was more interesting than my words.

Sylvia, on her struggles in Hollywood

But this scene has an even darker side. 

In another interview, she said “I really had to fight for my life in there”, adding that the Thai men who were raping her in the scene “were not actors”. 

“It was a very humiliating scene, very difficult.” 

Role that 'shrank' career

The success of the first film led to Sylvia starring in three more films in the Emmanuelle franchise.

Typecast as a result of her breakout role, she went on to appear in steamy scenes in films such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and World War One spy drama Mata Hari. 

Writing in her memoir, she said: “This role I had imagined as a springboard shrank me for good.

“My body was more interesting than my words.”

Only one day into shooting The Tenant, by Roman Polanski, she was replaced as the leading lady by actress Isabelle Adjani.

In 1977, she was an early choice to star in Louis Malle’s period drama Pretty Baby, but the role ended up going to Susan Sarandon.

Friends with Sergio Leone, the filmmaker wanted her to star in his 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America - but her casting was blocked by the producers.

She even tried - unsuccessfully - to be the Bond girl in four of the films and was also lost out on playing Lois Lane in Superman (1978).

While Sylvia continued to act, her career would be cut tragically short.

A heavy smoker since age 11, she was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001 and underwent three courses of chemotherapy and surgery after the cancer spread to her lungs.

After suffering a stroke in 2012, she was hospitalised and died four months later from esophageal and lung cancer, at only 60 years old.

She was buried near her place of birth in Utrecht, the Netherlands.