Anita Pallenberg

Short Biography

Anita Pallenberg (25 January 1944 – 13 June 2017) was an Italian-German actress and 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 had three children.Early life Pallenberg was born on 25 January 1944 in German-occupied Rome, the daughter of Arnold "Arnaldo" Pallenberg, an ethnic German Italian sales agent, amateur singer and hobbyist painter, and Paula Wiederhold, a German embassy secretary. The family was separated because of the war, and she did not meet her father until she was 3 years old. Her father later sent her to a boarding school in Germany to help her master the language. Anita became fluent in four languages at an early age and studied medicine, picture restoration and graphic design without achieving a degree.She was expelled from school when she was 16, after which she spend time in Rome with the Dolce Vita crowd, and then went to New York City to hang out with Andy Warhol's Factory crowd. She then began her career as a fashion model in Paris.Before settling in London, she lived in Germany, in her native Rome, as well as in New York City, where she was involved with the Living Theatre, starring in the play Paradise Now, which featured onstage nudity, and Andy Warhol's Factory.Film and fashionPallenberg appeared in more than a dozen films over a 40-year span. Most notably, she appeared as The Great Tyrant in Roger Vadim's 1968 cult-classic sci-fi film Barbarella, and as the sleeper wife of Michel Piccoli in the film Dillinger Is Dead (1969), directed by Marco Ferreri. She also had roles in the German crime thriller A Degree of Murder (1967) which featured music by Brian Jones, the cult film Candy (1968) as James Coburn's possessive nurse, 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).Pallenberg 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, she related her encounters in Rome in 1960, while La Dolce Vita was being filmed, with Italian filmmakers such as Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and with the novelist Alberto Moravia . In 1985, for the video of "Wild Boys", Duran Duran used the clip of Pallenberg from Barbarella.She appeared in two films in 2007; she portrayed "The Queen" in the comedy-drama Mister Lonely by Harmony Korine, and played a character named Sin in Go Go Tales.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.In the 1990s, Pallenberg went back to school to study fashion. She graduated from Central Saint Martins in London in 1994 with a fashion and textile degree. However, she decided not to forge ahead with a career in fashion, finding it too cutthroat and cruel.Rolling Stones Romantic relationships Pallenberg is known for her romantic involvement with Rolling Stones' band members Brian Jones and later and Keith Richards. Pallenberg first met the band in 1965 in Munich, where she was working on a modelling assignment, and before they had made it big. Jones spoke German and they began a friendship that turned into two-year relationship. She later recalled that they took a lot of acid during this time, but it caused Jones to have nightmares. She ended her relationship with Jones in 1967 after he became violent toward her during a vacation in Morocco, where he was then hospitalised. He died in 1969.In Morocco, Keith Richards saw Jones assaulting Pallenberg, and pulled her away and then took her back to England, where she moved in with him. She and Richards began a relationship that lasted until 1980, although they never married. Richards' lifestyle was not conducive to fatherhood, Pallenberg later explained. She was trying to raise their two young children but Richards was up all night and slept all day. She eventually was able to detox herself from drugs but Richards continued to use. 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.There were rumours that Pallenberg also had a brief affair with Mick Jagger during the filming of Performance, and Keith Richards states in his autobiography Life that it happened. However, Pallenberg denied the affair in March 2007 when Performance was released on DVD and again during an interview in 2008.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. 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.[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." 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".Richards says she shared his addiction to heroin; 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 convicted and fined several weeks after Richards's arrest.Pallenberg spent a lot of time with singer Marianne Faithfull, Jagger's girlfriend in the late 1960s, who remained a friend of Pallenberg's. They appeared together in the fourth series (2001) of the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous in episode four, "Donkey", with Faithfull playing God and Pallenberg The Devil.Death of Scott Cantrell In 1979, a 17-year-old boy, Scott Cantrell, shot himself in the head in Pallenberg's bed with a gun owned by Keith Richards, while 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 on the same floor of the house at the time the fatal shot was fired.Personal life Pallenberg and Richards together had three children: son Marlon Leon Sundeep (born 10 August 1969), daughter Dandelion Angela (who went by her middle name; born 17 April 1972), and a son Tara Jo Jo Gunne (26 March – 6 June 1976). Tara Jo Jo died in his cot. 10 weeks after birth, a victim of SIDS.Pallenberg later stated that she first became pregnant in 1968, but that she was pressured to have an abortion so she could take part in the film Performance, which caused her to feel extremely resentful. She became pregnant again with Marlon during the filming.In later years, she lived in Chelsea, London, but spent the winters in Jamaica. She sporadically appeared in public as a party DJ.Pallenberg at one point was interested in writing a memoir but decided not to go ahead with it. "The publishers want to hear only about the Stones and more dirt on Mick Jagger and I'm just not interested, " she said in 2008. "I had several publishers and they were all the same. They all wanted salacious. And everybody is writing autobiographies and that's one reason why I'm not going to do it. If young Posh Spice can write her autobiography, then I don't want to write one!"Health problems and death Pallenberg suffered from Hepatitis C, and had to have two hip surgeries—including a hip replacement, which caused her to walk with a limp.After detoxing in the early 1980s, Pallenberg abstained from drug use but later had a relapse. In 2014, she said she had been 14 years sober from drugs. She stopped drinking in 1987 but also had a relapse with alcohol in 2004, after her second hip surgery. She regularly attended AA meetings.Pallenberg died 13 June 2017, aged 73. She was survived by her two children and five grandchildren.