Book description
The candid and heartbreakingly honest memoir of Sylvia Kristel, the
cinema icon of the 1970s who played the lead role in the worldwide
sensation erotic Emmanuelle films.
1974: After a year of wrangling with the censors, the erotic film,
Emmanuelle, is a blockbuster sensation on release in France and a box
office triumph around the world from Japan to the States. The image that
adorned cinemas across the world was of an unknown 20 year old posing
naked, innocent and vulnerable on a wicker chair. Overnight Sylvia
Kristel was propelled into international superstardom (at the height of
her fame she was invited to address the Brazilian parliament) and turned
into an icon of sexual liberation.
Sylvia Kristel was born of a dysfunctional family and an impossibly
strict religious education. But having won the Miss TV Europe
competition in 1973 she was driven by her own ambition to be an actress
on the world stage and auditioned for the part of the innocent
seductress in Emmanuelle. Through the phenomenal success of the three
Emmanuelle films she starred in, she became the darling of Hollywood, as
she seduced and was seduced by the rich and the beautiful of the golden
age of cinema. But she found herself typecast as Emmanuelle and often
played roles that capitalized upon that image, most notably starring in
an adaptation of 'Lady Chatterly's Lover', and a nudity-filled biopic of
World War I spy, Mata Hari, in which she played the title role. Almost
inevitably she became the victim of her own innocence as it was
Emmanuelle people wanted, not Sylvia. The price that she paid for her
meteoric rise was an equally rapid descent into an excess of alcohol and
drugs as her tempestuous family life threatened to fall apart all together.
Naked, candid and heart-breakingly honest, 'Undressing Emmanuelle' tells
the story of one of Europe's most celebrated cinema icons and the price
she paid for her beauty and innocence. 'Far from being seedy, this is
an elegantly written book. The prose is simple, evocative and highly
readable. I found myself wishing that our home-grown celebrities would
write books full of ideas and feelings, not glossy magazine
therapy-speak. A few of her highly stylised sentences tell far more
about the whys and wherefores of exposure and fame than all the trash
clogging the bestseller lists of late.' Belle de Jour, The Times
'This is a poignant, semi-intentionally hilarious autobiography. Her
story is gripping.' Sunday Times
'A remarkable memoir. A series of impressionistic snapshots, delivered
in austere, melancholic prose, it is quite unlike other show-biz memoirs
and its candour is raw. Sylvia is a cult icon, she loosened our
inhibitions. But the price was high.' Bridget Hourican The Gloss
Magazine Sylvia Kristel was born 1952 in the Netherlands. At the age
of 17 she started modeling and won the Miss TV Europe in 1973. Her
cinema career was launched by the phenomenal worldwide success of
'Emmanuelle' in 1974. After starring in a number of 'bonkbuster' films
and winning her fight against drugs, alcohol and cancer she quit acting
and is now an artist in Amsterdam.
