In August 2001, Sylvia Millecam died of cancer. The story is well known: she declined conventional medical treatment, embarked on a long path through alternative healers, felt supported by her friend and medium Yomanda, and died after a hopeless, lonely, and painful journey.

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When I made an in-depth documentary about her a year after her death, I refused to accuse her of shortsightedness—despite the fact that conventional treatment might have offered a real chance of survival. Suffocated by fear and lost in ritual incantations, she made fateful choices.

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In the film, it becomes clear that those choices were partly shaped by the fate of her beloved father, Freek. In 1990, he underwent lung cancer surgery—against the advice of alternative practitioners—but it later turned out to be merely an infection. That event embedded itself traumatically in Sylvia’s psyche. It must have contributed to her catastrophic decisions.

In her final months, paralyzed by fear, Sylvia withdrew even from her most intimate friends, as revealed in conversations with actor Gijs de Lange and writer Haye van der Heyden, who had lived closely with her for years. Eventually, she became unreachable.

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The documentary is not only shocking for its dramatic chronology, but especially because Sylvia’s partner, Nol Willemsen, gave me their complete private archive—a vivid chronicle of their intense and joyful love life, before the lump in her breast changed everything. Vacations, costume parties, wild trips, tender moments.

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It’s how I remember her too—from the evenings after Brandpunt or Ook dat Nog broadcasts, when we’d end up dancing on the bar at the studio center. She had an unabashed zest for life. “At drama school, she was already the girl the spotlight followed,” says Gijs de Lange in the documentary. That became the title of the film: The Girl in the Spotlight.

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She thrived on attention, on life, became the most beloved TV woman in the country, and remained—true to her Brabant roots—approachable to all. At the same time, she had always been drawn to ritual. Wherever Sylvia and Nol traveled, candles were lit.

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It was a strange experience. The frivolity, warmth, joy, and witty nonconformity radiating from the private footage made Sylvia’s chosen path toward ruin both incomprehensible and—on some level—understandable. It was fear, fear, fear. The worst possible advisor. Until the light went out.

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On vacation in Nice, I showed a preview of the documentary to my friends Sjoerd Pleijsier and Huub Stapel. The actors had known Sylvia since their shared years at the Maastricht drama school. For a moment, there was silence. Then Huub burst into emotional rage. He shouted: “She didn’t even see me, that Limburg oaf, back at drama school!” Sjoerd was in tears. He had loved her deeply.