Since this Wednesday, September 25, Emmanuelledirected by Audrey Diwan, is available in theaters.
Noémie Merlant plays Emmanuelle, who was played by Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel in 1974. The erotic film was censored by Georges Pompidou, but these restrictions were eventually removed by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
Sylvia Kristel has also reinterpreted this flagship role in French cinema twelve times : four times in cinema, eight times on television, between 1970 and 1990. It is an adaptation of the novel by Emmanuelle Arsan.
A violent husband: hell begins
A love affair will break her. Sylvia Kristel left the Belgian writer Hugo Claus, father of her son, Arthur, in the 1970s. She will then get into a relationship with the actor Ian McShane, met on the set of the film Man Behind the Mask. “He had a Greek nose and big, bright eyes. His smile wasn’t innocent, it was like I was his prey and he had wolf teeth.” Sylvia Kristel confides to
The Standard. “But for many, the devil is beautiful and my attraction to Ian overwhelmed me.”
This relationship with the father of two children will be very toxic and violent for her: “After being brutal, he treated me with feminine gentleness. He sometimes cried and regretted his excesses. Then, without any provocation, we found ourselves fighting again. (…) Our relationship was of the order of love and hate.”
Sylvia Kristel sinks into addiction
While Ian McShane was heavily into alcohol and cocaine, the actress eventually fell into it as well. “I was sniffing, running, falling, sniffing more and more.” she confides in her book, Nue. “I had a docker’s liver, a nose full of holes from drugs: the doctors took me for a fairground animal.” she explains to
l’ExpressSylvia Kristel also smoked from the age of 11, she will be treated for throat cancer in 2002 and then lung cancer in 2004.
After a fall during an argument which led to After losing their baby, the actress leaves Ian McShane for good
and returns to live in Paris. “He begged me to see him. He begged me to go back to London with him, to forgive him for the last time. This time, I couldn’t.” She then married an American businessman, then the film producer, Philippe Blot. The actress then lived with Freddy de Vree, a Belgian producer who died in 2004. Sylvia Kristel, after having a stroke, died of lung cancer in 2012, aged 60.
