Paulo Coelho

Of course it’s difficult to top a box office success like Emmanuelle, so it will always be my most important work. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of.The only thing I was trying to portray was serenity. Also, innocence, vulnerability and elegance.

(AP/ The Hague) – 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.

“I was a silent actress, a body. I belonged to dreams, to those that can’t be broken,” Kristel, who for years battled drug and alcohol addiction, wrote in her 2006 autobiography “Naked”.

“When I think of the end of my life, I think mainly: I didn’t do nothing, but I could have done more”, Kristel said in a 2005 interview with Dutch newspaper Volkskrant.

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