Striking brunette beauty whose uninhibited performances in the Emmanuelle soft-core porn films (Emmanuelle, Emmanuelle-Joys of a Woman, Goodbye Emmanuelle et al.) of the 1970s and 1980s brought her international fame and belied her Calvinist upbringing. Kristel isn't likely to win any Oscars, but in those roles that allow her to release her sexual energy (which is to say, most of them) she becomes almost compulsively watchable, because she seems to be having such a good time! Kristel was cast in art-house fare by the likes of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Chabrol, and Fons Rademakers, whose Because of the Cats (1972) was her first feature film. Her casting in subsequent English-language pictures, including The Fifth Musketeer, The Concorde-Airport '79 (both 1979), Private Lessons, The Nude Bomb (both 1980), Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981), Mata Hari, Red Heat (both 1985), and Dracula's Widow (1988), was intended to capitalize on her Emmanuelle-generated notoriety, and to that end featured liberal doses of nudity. Nevertheless, they were mostly duds.