Sylvia Kristel, 60, Dies; Starred in ‘Emmanuelle’ – The New York Times

Ms. Kristel went on to appear in several Emmanuelle feature films and made-for-television movies.

According to AVN, ”Emmanuelle” is said to have earned more than $100 million. Ms. Kristel was ambivalent about her experience making the films; they allowed her to travel and opened doors for her as an actress, she said, and it was hard not to be proud of a film that so many people had seen. But the career that grew out of them was not what she had planned or hoped for.

She did act in mainstream films, working with renowned European directors including Alain Robbe-Grillet (“Playing With Fire,” 1975) and Claude Chabrol (“Alice or the Last Escapade,” 1977), starring in Mr. Jaeckin’s adaptation of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1981) and spending several years in Hollywood, where she appeared in the action-adventure film “The Fifth Musketeer” (1979); “The Nude Bomb” (1980, a reprise of the 1960s television series “Get Smart,” starring Don Adams); and the racy, very successful comedy “Private Lessons” (1981), in which she played an immigrant maid who seduces a teenager. But she was nearly always cast in sexually suggestive parts, and her performances drew considerably less attention than her face and figure.

In her 2006 autobiography, “Undressing Emmanuelle,” she wrote that she was “disappointed and a little hurt” that her more serious work went unappreciated. “I was dressed but people preferred me naked,” she wrote.

Ms. Kristel was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on Sept. 28, 1952, and grew up in a hotel owned by her parents, who separated when she was 16. She worked as a secretary before becoming a model, and when she was 20 she won the Miss TV Holland and the Miss TV Europe beauty contests.

In later years Ms. Kristel pursued a career as a painter. She directed a short animated film, “Topor et Moi,” that was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006.