R.I.P. Eva Norvind

[Reza]

What a colorful life! I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't made a film about her. She certainly led a life with all the requisite ingredients to help sell a film.



London Telegraph 5/20/06

Eva Norvind

Eva Norvind, who drowned off Huatulco beach in Mexico on May 14 aged 62, was a Norwegian-born dancer at the Folies Bergère, a Playboy bunny girl, the Mexican film industry's answer to Brigitte Bardot, one of America's leading dominatrices, a volunteer worker for Mother Teresa's charity, an independent film producer and a "psychosexual counsellor".

This varied curriculum vitae included friendships with feminists such as Nancy Friday and Erica Jong, and an appearance beside Hillary Clinton at the Beijing Women's Conference, but it also brought a period of estrangement from her daughter - a successful telenovela actress whose fame in Mexico now far outstrips her mother's - who denounced her as a whore.

Eva Norvind's own acting career was, after a promising start, not an unqualified triumph, though she later worked on the fringes of Hollywood, training the actress Rene Russo to make her sufficiently seductive in The Thomas Crown Affair. She also produced documentaries, mostly sex-based, and became the subject of Didn't Do It For Love, a film about her life by the German lesbian feminist director Monika Treut.

Eva Johanne Chegodayeva Sakonskaya was born on May 7 1944 at Trondheim in Norway, the daughter of an émigré Russian prince (who later devoted his life to collecting bottles) and his wife, a sculptress. When Eva was 15, her mother took her to France, where she was happy to parade naked, quickly found her métier in beauty contests, and landed a minor role in Marcel Moussy's Saint Tropez Blues (1961).

She moved to the Folies Bergère and the Comédie Française, before going to Canada and then New York, where she had a stint as a bunny girl. After leaving school, Eva - who had by this time adopted the surname Norvind - travelled to Mexico to learn Spanish (she eventually claimed to have mastered 11 languages). There she made seven films between 1964 and 1968, including Juan Pistola, Blood Pact, and Este Nocho No. None was much good, but her sultry looks won her a following.

She also attracted controversy after advocating birth control on Mexican television; the government expelled her, though she was smuggled back in to the country 24 hours later.

During the 1970s Eva Norvind brought up her daughter Nailea as a single mother, supporting herself with freelance photographic work, journalism, a job as a film distributor and - she claimed in Monika Treut's film - flirtations with prostitution and work for Mother Teresa. In the early 1980s she returned to New York (her daughter ran away from home aged 12) and studied film production at NYU.

She soon became fascinated by the city's sado-masochistic subculture and in 1987, under the name Ava Taurel, set up a chain of dungeons and a sexual advice service. This she augmented by lectures and regular appearances on chat shows and, a decade later, a degree in Human Sexuality. In addition to Monika Treut's film, Eva Norvind also featured in the documentaries Whipped (1996) and Tops & Bottoms (1999). She also produced her own films; the tango was a particular interest.

Eva Norvind regretted that her promotion of S&M had led to its wider acceptance and popularity in Manhattan, which undercut her own business. "The moment you start commercialising," she said, "you kill something."