Marisa Mell was a dazzling sex symbol and a style icon in the swingin’ 1960s, but her career l

Marisa Mell was a dazzling sex symbol and a style icon in the swingin’ 1960s, but her career later dissolved into poverty and tragedy. She was born on February 24, 1939 in Graz, Austria. She was 5'8" tall and had a perfect face and body to match.  Her father abandoned their family when she was young, and she often wore black. She was never seen without a man on her arm because she hated being alone. The first time her friend Erika Pluhar saw her, she thought “I’ve never seen such a beautiful girl. In the movies maybe, but never so close and real… I envied her haughty untouchability, this insurmountable aura of beauty.”  She lived the good life. But due to a freak accident, her success was almost prematurely botched.  In 1963, Marisa suffered a horrible car accident while shooting in France. Comatose for six hours, she almost lost her right eye in the horrific collision, and required extensive surgery for two years. Due to good surgical work, the effects were un-noticeable. She believed she survived because “God was on my side.” After recovering, she moved to Italy and became a well known B-movie starlet. In 1969, Marisa she suffered a miscarriage. The child had belonged to her boyfriend, an Italian nightclub owner, drug dealer, mobster and producer with aristocratic roots named Pier Luigi Torri. Through him, Marisa accessed a world of wealth, parties, drugs, glamour and power. He drove his Ferraris and Rolls-Royces around Monte Carlo casino, gambled away millions of lira at a time, and owned several villas and yachts. Sadly, he also had a violent and abusive temper and often beat her. His nightclub was eventually busted in a massive cocaine scandal so he fled the country.  Marisa had affairs with some of the most famous men of her time, including  Alain Delon, Warren Beatty, Helmut Berger, Stephen Boyd, John Phillip Law, Roman Polanski, and even the Shah of Iran. Marisa had had sex with the“passionate and animalistic” Delon leading up to the press conference announcing his engagement to his wife Nathalie, and after it! During her relationship with actor Stephen Boyd, they had a wedding ceremony at a gypsy camp as well as an exorcism because they were “possessed by an evil demon. Our demon was our passion.“ They eventually broke up, but after Stephen’s death in 1977, she claimed that his spirit often spoke to her from beyond the grave. By the late 1970s, Marisa’s career hit a decline. She starred in films until her death, but most of them were D-list and were beneath her. She was also forced to pose for nudie mags because she was broke and desperate. Marisa gave birth to a premature baby girl who died as well, which drove her to drink and use drugs. She said of herself, “I was never proud of my beauty, I was rather bothered by it. It was a tragedy. Every man wanted me, but no man wanted to keep me.” Despite all her attempts to do so, she never found true enduring love. The whole world had wanted her, but when she grew old she was cast aside. When she lost her looks, she lost everything. Yet she was confident in herself and refused to get plastic surgery; something which is very admirable and rare in this day and age. She lived on welfare and scrounged for an income until she died alone at a hospital in Austria of throat cancer on May 16, 1992, at only 53-years old. None of her former celebrity friends attended her funeral.-The Glamour and the Suffering of Marisa Mell -- source link

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