Anita Pallenberg, a model and actress who was sometimes called the muse of the Rolling Stones and had affairs with three of the band’s key members, including a 12-year relationship with Keith Richards, died June 13 at a hospital in Chichester, England. She was believed to be 75.

Richards confirmed her death to the Associated Press through a spokesperson. The cause was not known, although she reportedly had hepatitis and other ailments.

The alluring Pallenberg, who met the Stones by sneaking backstage at a concert in 1965 and offering the band hashish, quickly became the lover of one of the band’s guitarists, Brian Jones, then left him for Richards, with whom she had three children and a shared appetite for heroin.

While making the cult classic film “Performance” with Mick Jagger in 1968, she reportedly had an affair with the Stones’ lead singer.

The strikingly beautiful Pallenberg had such a magnetic presence – an “evil glamour,” in the words of Jagger’s onetime paramour, Marianne Faithfull – that she was credited with helping mold the group’s lasting image.

“She almost single-handedly engineered a cultural revolution in London,” Faithfull wrote, “by bringing together the Stones and the jeunesse dorée” –- the young, fashionable and rich. “The Stones came away with a patina of aristocratic decadence that … transformed the Stones from pop stars into cultural icons.”

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Throughout the 1960s, Pallenberg seemed to be everywhere. She grew up in Rome and was an international model who spoke several languages; she was part of Andy Warhol’s eclectic group of artists at the Factory in New York, where she became friendly with Beat Generation writers Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs; she acted in films alongside Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando.

Richards and Pallenberg named their first child Marlon after Brando, with whom Pallenberg appeared in a campy 1968 sex farce, “Candy.”

Pallenberg was a constant presence with the Stones in the late 1960s and 1970s, when they recorded several of their most acclaimed albums, including “Let It Bleed,” “Sticky Fingers,” “Exile on Main St.” and “Goats Head Soup.”

Her fashion sense influenced the Stones’ flamboyant style, and Richards, who was the same size as the 5-foot-9 Pallenberg, sometimes wore her gender-bending outfits onstage.

The couple had a daughter, Dandelion, in 1971. Another son was born five years later, but he died at the age of 10 weeks of sudden-infant-death syndrome.

Richards and Pallenberg never married, but their relationship was marked by heroin addiction, drug arrests, tempestuousness and tears. Richards’ mother decided Pallenberg was an unfit parent and raised their daughter, who dropped the name Dandelion in favor of Angela.

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Anita Pallenberg was born in Rome on, most likely, Jan. 25, 1944. (Some sources say 1942.) Her father was a travel agent.

She was expelled from a German boarding school when she was 16 and became a model in Italy and New York.

In 1994, Pallenberg received a degree in fashion from Central Saint Martins, a London art school, and became an influence on model Kate Moss and fashion designers Bella Freud and Stella McCartney.

After having two hip replacements, she resumed acting in her 60s, appearing in Abel Ferrara’s “Go Go Tales” (2007), and Harmony Korine’s “Mister Lonely” (2007). She was often asked about writing her memoirs, but never did.

“I had several publishers and they were all the same,” she told the Guardian in 2008. “They all wanted salacious.”

Survivors include her children and five grandchildren.

“She knew everything and she could say it in five languages,” Richards once said about her. “She scared the pants off me.”

In a 2008 interview with the Guardian, she said, “I still do.”


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