Off the Top of my Head

Eulogy to Sylvia Kristel

The radiant light finally left the incredible eyes of 70s starlet Sylvia Kristel, who was known best for her starring role in the French soft-porn series “Emmanuelle.”

An enthusiastic smoker of unfiltered cigarettes since her early teens and, later in life, experimented with smoking through orifices other than her mouth (see “Emmanuelle” 1974 the first film in the Emmanuelle series), Kristel succumbed to throat and lung cancer and died on October 17, 2012.

She approached cocaine similarly and developed quite an expensive habit that led her to make some rather poor business decisions, including the sale of her interest in the film “Private Lessons,” which went on to gross $26 million in the United States alone.

Kristel loved cocaine like she loved smoking and shagging and once said, cocaine is like a “super-vitamin, a very fashionable substance, without danger, but expensive, far more exciting than drowning in alcohol – a fuel necessary to stay in the swing.”

No one has ever quite matched her exquisite talent at looking fantastic half naked on rattan furniture.