Anita Pallenberg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Anita Pallenberg |
| Born |
6 April 1944 (age 68)
Rome, Italy |
| Residence |
London, England |
| Occupation |
Actress; fashion designer; artist; former model |
| Partner(s) |
Keith Richards (1967–1979) |
| Children |
Marlon Richards
Angela (Dandelion) Richards
Tara Richards (deceased) |
Anita Pallenberg (born 6 April 1944,
Rome, Italy) is an Italian-born actress, model, and fashion designer. She was the romantic partner of
Rolling Stones multi-instrumentalist and guitarist
Brian Jones and later the partner of
Keith Richards, the guitarist of the same band, from 1967 to 1979, by whom she has two surviving children.
Early life
Pallenberg was born on 6 April 1944 in German-occupied Rome, the
daughter of Arnaldo Pallenberg, an Italian artist and Paula Wiederhold, a
German secretary. Anita became fluent in four languages at an early age
and studied medicine, picture restoration and graphic design.
[3] Before settling in London, she lived in Germany, her native Rome, as well as New York City, where she was involved with the
Living Theatre, starring in the play
Paradise Now, which featured on-stage nudity, and
Andy Warhol's
Factory.
[2]
Romantic involvements
Pallenberg is known for her romantic involvement with Rolling Stones band members
Brian Jones, whom she met in 1965 in Munich, where she was working on a modelling assignment,
[4] and
Keith Richards, for whom she left Jones in 1967 while on holiday in Morocco.
[5]
She remained in a relationship with Richards until 1980 although they
never married. There were rumours that she also had a brief affair with
Mick Jagger during the filming of
Performance, and Keith Richards states in his autobiography
Life that it happened.
[6] However, Pallenberg denied the affair in March 2007 when
Performance was released on DVD.
[7]
Children
Pallenberg and Richards together had three children: son Marlon (born
10 August 1969), daughter Angela (her middle name, which she chose to
go by after initially being named and called Dandelion by her parents),
born 17 April 1972), and a second son, Tara (26 March – 6 June 1976),
who died in his cot 10 weeks after birth.
Influence on the Rolling Stones
Author
A. E. Hotchner
mentions Pallenberg's influence on the development and presentation of
the Rolling Stones from the late 1960s and through the 1970s.
[8][page needed] She played an unusual role in the male-dominated world of
rock music in the late 1960s, acting as much more than just a
groupie or partner of a band member. Jagger respected her opinion enough that tracks on
Beggars Banquet were remixed when Pallenberg criticised them.
[8][page needed] In the 2002 compilation release of
Forty Licks, Pallenberg is credited as singing background vocals on "
Sympathy for the Devil".
Tony Sanchez's account of his time as Richards's bodyguard and drug
dealer mentions Pallenberg's strange spiritual practices: "She was
obsessed with black magic and began to carry a string of garlic with her
everywhere — even to bed — to ward off vampires. She also had a strange
mysterious old shaker for holy water which she used for some of her
rituals. Her ceremonies became increasingly secret, and she warned me
never to interrupt her when she was working on a spell."
[9][unreliable source?]Sanchez
goes on to describe Anita as having been "like a life-force, a woman so
powerful, so full of strength and determination that men came to lean
on her".
[10]
Richards says she shared his addiction to heroin;
[11] she was charged first in
the 1977 Toronto heroin arrest
that led to Richards being arrested on charges that could have led to a
lengthy prison sentence. A warrant for Pallenberg's arrest was the
reason police came to search the pair's hotel rooms; she pleaded guilty
to
marijuana possession and was fined, several weeks after Richards's arrest.
[12]
In 1981, after Richards and Pallenberg had split up, Richards stated
that he still loved Pallenberg and saw her as much as he ever did,
although he had already met his future wife
Patti Hansen.
[13] In a 1985
Rolling Stone interview,
Mick Jagger claimed that Pallenberg "nearly killed me",
[14]
when he was asked whether the Rolling Stones had any responsibility for
the personal drug addictions of people close to the band.
Singer
Marianne Faithfull, Jagger's girlfriend in the late 1960s, remained a friend of Pallenberg's.
[citation needed] They appeared together in the fourth series (2001) of the BBC-TV/Comedy Central/ Saunders and French production of
Absolutely Fabulous in episode four, "Donkey", with Faithfull playing "God" and Pallenberg "The Devil" in a dream sequence experienced by
Jennifer Saunders' character
Edina Monsoon.
Cleared of manslaughter
In 1979, a 17-year-old boy, Scott Cantrell, shot himself in the head
with a gun owned by Keith Richards, while in Pallenberg's bed, at the
South Salem, New York
house shared by Richards and Pallenberg. The youth had been employed as
a part-time groundskeeper at the estate and was involved in a sexual
relationship with Pallenberg. Richards was in Paris recording with the
Rolling Stones but his son was at the house when the teen killed
himself. Pallenberg was arrested; however, the death was ruled a suicide
in 1980, despite rumours that Pallenberg and Cantrell had been playing a
game of
Russian roulette.
The police investigation stated that Pallenberg was not in the room or
on the same floor of the house at the time the fatal shot was fired.
[1][page needed]
Film and fashion
Pallenberg has appeared in more than a dozen films over a forty year span. Most notably, she appeared as The Great Tyrant in
Roger Vadim's cult-classic sci-fi film
Barbarella, and as the sleeper wife of
Michel Piccoli in the film
Dillinger Is Dead, directed by
Marco Ferreri. She had a small part in
Volker Schlöndorff's
Michael Kohlhaas - der Rebell which was filmed in Slovakia in 1969 and the 1970 avant-garde
Performance
in which she played the role of Pherber (actually filmed in 1968 but
not released for two years). She appeared in a 1968 documentary about
the Rolling Stones,
Sympathy for the Devil, directed by French filmmaker
Jean-Luc Godard. In a March 2007 interview Anita related her encounters in Rome in 1960, while
La Dolce Vita was happening,
[clarification needed] with Italian filmmakers such as
Federico Fellini,
Alberto Moravia,
Luchino Visconti and
Pier Paolo Pasolini.
[15] In 1985 for the video of "
Wild Boys"
Duran Duran used the clip of Pallenberg from
Barbarella.
Pallenberg has been portrayed in popular film and television.
Monet Mazur played a young Pallenberg in the 2005 film
Stoned, a biographical film about the last year of Brian Jones' life. In 2006 the
NBC television show
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip included a
story arc in which the character
Harriet Hayes was hired to play Pallenberg in a film.
Pallenberg became a fashion designer during the 1990s, after four years at London's
St. Martins School of Art and Design.
[2] She now divides her time between New York City and Europe, and sporadically appears in public as a party
DJ.
[citation needed]
Filmography
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