© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty ImageFormer model and actress Anita Pallenberg — who played a crucial role in the history of The Rolling Stones as Brian Jones‘ girlfriend and later Keith Richards‘ — has died at 73. Her death was revealed in an Instagram post by Stella Schnabel, daughter of painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel.
“I was a little girl thinking I was big but I became a woman through knowing you. The secret lyrical you. My best friend. . The greatest woman I have ever known,” Schnabel wrote. “Go in peace my Roman mother, you will always be in my heart.“
In a 2008 interview with The Guardian, Pallenberg explained that she got involved with Jones after a Stones concert in Munich in 1965 and stayed with him for two years as his behavior became increasingly abusive. During a vacation in Morocco in 1967, Richards intervened between the two and Pallenberg became involved with Richards.
Richards and Pallenberg had three children: Marlon, born in 1969; Angela — who had originally been named Dandelion — in 1972; and Tara Jo Jo Gunne who died at 10-weeks old.
In 1979, Pallenberg was arrested in connection with the shooting death of a 17-year-old part-time groundskeeper at the Westchester County, New York house she and Richards shared but the death was ruled a suicide.
Richards and Pallenberg split in 1980. Pallenberg told The Guardian in 2008 that it was “lawyers” who forced the split, calling her a bad influence on Richards, although Pallenberg entered rehab in 1987
Pallenberg’s film work included appearances in Barbarella in 1968, and Performance in 1970, which starred Mick Jagger.
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