Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, whose iconic “Emmanuelle” role symbolised the sexual revolution of the 1970s and who spent years fighting drug addiction, has died aged 60 after a battle with cancer. “She died during the night during her sleep,” agent Marieke Verharen of Features Creative Management told AFP of the 60 year-old actress who had been admitted to an Amsterdam hospital in July following a stroke. Kristel was catapulted to fame by her first movie, “Emmanuelle” in 1974, which described the erotic adventures of a young woman in Asia. A worldwide success, it was shown in a cinema on the Champs-Elysees in Paris for 13 years. “I was a silent actress, a body. I belonged to dreams, to those that can be broken,” Kristel, who for years battled drug and alcohol addiction, wrote in her 2006 autobiography “Naked”. Agent Verharen declined to say whether the world’s most famous Dutch actress died at home or at hospital. The funeral will be private, she said. Kristel had a stroke following treatment for throat cancer. She was also suffering from liver cancer. Kristel is survived by a son, Arthur, who she had in 1975 with her then-husband Belgian author Hugo Claus.
