In 1971, before becoming famous, she took part in auditions for the female lead (a role ultimately played by Maria Schneider) in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 film Last Tango in Paris.

After the success of Emmanuelle, Kristel was often cast in films capitalizing on a similar sexually provocative image and in roles involving nudity.

After her brief comic turn in the Get Smart revival film The Nude Bomb in 1980, Kristel starred in the sex comedy Private Lessons (1981) as Nicole Mallow, a maid who seduces a teenage boy.

In addition to her early tryout for Last Tango, Kristel would often come close to having leading or supporting parts in several other major films over the first two decades of her career.

In 1977, she was an early choice to star as Hattie in Louis Malle's controversial period drama Pretty Baby (1978), but the role eventually went to Susan Sarandon.

Several years later, Malle asked her to play Ingrid in Damage, his 1992 drama of sexual obsession, but Kristel was unavailable at the time and Miranda Richardson was cast.

She was friends with Sergio Leone, who wanted her for the role of Carol while casting Once Upon a Time in America (1984); the producers did not agree and the part went to Tuesday Weld.

In 1992, her friend Gérard Depardieu, wanting to help secure her comeback, unsuccessfully tried to persuade the producers of 1492: Conquest of Paradise to cast her as Queen Isabella I, ultimately played by Sigourney Weaver.

In May 1990, she appeared in the television series My Riviera, filmed at her home in Saint-Tropez and offering insights on her life and motivations in an interview with writer-director Michael Feeney Callan.

The writing was translated into English as Undressing Emmanuelle: A Memoir, by Fourth Estate, 2 July 2007, in which she described a turbulent personal life that was blighted by addictions to drugs and alcohol, and her quest for a father figure, which resulted in some destructive relationships with older men.

However, their five-year affair led to no significant career break for Kristel, but a relationship she describes in her autobiography as "awful – he was witty and charming, but we were too much alike."

This proved her downfall, although at the time she thought of it as a "supervitamin, a very fashionable substance, without danger, but expensive, far more exciting than drowning in alcohol – a fuel necessary to stay in the swing.