Rolling Stone Keith Richards ended Anita Pallenberg career in jealousy over affair with Mick Jagger
In Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, the late actor speaks from beyond the grave as she confirms the affair with the Stones’ lead singer. The film suggests Richards acted out of envy over the infidelity when he offered her money to stop acting.
The movie is based on audio tapes and an unpublished memoir discovered by her son Marlon Richards (who is also a producer on the project) after his mother’s death in 2017 at the age of 73.
Many quotes are read by Avengers star Scarlett Johansson due to their poor quality.
Pallenberg had been a budding actor appearing the cult sci-fi movie Barbarella and had become romantically linked with Jagger on the set of Performance while she was still in a relationship with Richards.
Months after the affair, she became pregnant with Richard’s child prompting the musician to pause her career. However, the guitarist left home himself to join the Stones’ tour leaving his partner alone with the baby.
The model said she was left feeling “betrayed” and the behaviour pushed her to start using heroin again.
“Honestly I was confused. Betrayed. But the rule with the boys (The Rolling Stones) was never show emotion. Heroin makes you feel warm, like you belong.
“It seemed like a solution. I was on my own with Marlon for months. I stopped breastfeeding and gave him bottles. When Keith came back I was very stoned.”
Another friend of Pallenberg is seen saying that the late actor was “kept down” by the guitarist’s jealousy despite being “so talented”.
Richards also defended his decision to separate their children after the couple lost their third child Tara to cot death at 10 weeks, forcing Marlon to live with him in the US while his daughter Angela went to live with his mother Doris in the UK.
He said: “I had to take Angela and put her with my mother. It was incredibly sad for us but given the circumstances, it was the only decision.”
Friends of the Pallenberg said the incident left her “out of control” and sounding like an “animal” from grief.
Her son discovered the manuscript in Pallenberg’s London apartment after she died. “I had no idea she’d been writing this,” he told The Independent. “She was very much like that – quite devious.”
The material was found in a Manolo Blahnik shoe box containing around a dozen audio tapes of his mother narrating her life, as well as typed transcripts of interviews she had given for a possible book.
“The material was very raw and emotional and full of things she never would have discussed with me,” Richards said.