Undressing Emmanuelle: A Memoir
by Sylvia Kristel
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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 show more 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. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Interesting to note that Sylvia Kristel did most of her work and play in the throes of serious drug and alcohol abuse. The only way to overcome her own conservative and reserved nature was to deaden herself and dance away her pain. Sad that she did not attempt to know herself sober and to overcome whatever it was that kept herself hidden from even the people she felt most important in her life. The first half of the book is very good but then with the onset of alcohol and drug abuse the Hollywood syndrome takes over, and celebrity and the quest for shallow victories hastens her ultimate departure from her truest self. Not sure she ever recovered though she attempted in her own words to claim that she did. A lot of shallow name-dropping show more towards the end of the book but understandable for a washed-up B-grade movie star who had one of the most beautiful combinations of intelligence, good looks, and a very fine body. show less
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Author Information
10+ Works 69 Members
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Undressing Emmanuelle: A Memoir
- Original publication date
- 2007-07-02
Classifications
- Genres
- Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 791.43028092 — Arts & recreation Recreation, sports, and performing arts Movies, TV, Video Motion pictures, radio, television, podcasting Motion pictures Standard subdivisions Acting and performance Standard subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography Biography
- LCC
- PN2718 .K75 .A3 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Drama Dramatic representation. The theater Special regions or countries
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 55
- Popularity
- 554,071
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.56)
- Languages
- Dutch, English, French, Portuguese
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 1
