Nastassja Kinski

Nastassja Kinski
Nastassja Kinski in 2009
Born Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski
(1961-01-24) 24 January 1961
Berlin, West Germany
Nationality German
Occupation Actress, model
Years active 1975–present
Spouse(s)
Ibrahim Moussa (m. 1984–1992)
Partner(s) Quincy Jones (1992–1995)
Children 3
Parent(s) Klaus Kinski
Ruth Brigitte Tocki
Relatives Pola Kinski (half sister)
Nikolai Kinski (half-brother)

Nastassja Aglaia Kinski (born 24 January 1961)[1][2] is a German actress and former model who has appeared in more than 60 films in Europe and the United States. Her worldwide breakthrough was with Stay As You Are (1978), then came to global prominence with her Golden Globe Award-winning performance as the title character in the Roman Polanski-directed film Tess (1979). Other notable films in which she acted include the erotic horror film Cat People (1982), the Wim Wenders dramas Paris, Texas (1984) and Faraway, So Close! (1993), and the biographical drama film An American Rhapsody (2001). Kinski is also fluent in four languages, German, English, French and Italian.

Early life

Kinski was born in Berlin as Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski.[3] She is the daughter of German actor Klaus Kinski[4] and his second wife, actress Ruth Brigitte Tocki.[5] She is of partial Polish descent as her grandfather Bruno Nakszynski was a Germanized ethnic Pole.[6] Kinski has two half-siblings; Pola and Nikolai Kinski. Her parents divorced in 1968. After the age of 10, Kinski rarely saw her father. Her mother struggled financially to support them.[7] They eventually lived in a commune in Munich.

In a 1999 interview, Kinski denied that her father had molested her as a child, but said he had abused her "in other ways."[7] In 2013, when interviewed about the allegations of sexual abuse made by her half-sister Pola Kinski,[8][9] she confirmed that he tried with her, but did not succeed. She said:

Career

Kinski began working as a model as a teenager in Germany. Actress Lisa Kreuzer of the German New Wave helped get her the role of the mute Mignon in Wim Wenders 1975 film The Wrong Move,[11] in which at the age of 12 she was depicted topless.[11][12] She later played one of the leading roles in Wenders' film Paris, Texas (1984) and appeared in his Faraway, So Close (1993).

In 1976, while still a teenager, Kinski had her first two major roles: in Wolfgang Petersen's feature film-length episode Reifezeugnis of the German TV crime series Tatort. Next, she appeared in the British horror film To the Devil a Daughter (1976), produced by Hammer Film Productions, which was released in the UK just 40 days after Kinski's fifteenth birthday, making it a virtual certainty she was only fourteen when her scenes were shot (including full frontal nudity). In regards to her early films, Kinski has stated that she felt exploited by the industry. In an interview with W, she said, "If I had had somebody to protect me or if I had felt more secure about myself, I would not have accepted certain things. Nudity things. And inside it was just tearing me apart."[13]

In 1978, Kinski starred in the Italian romance Stay As You Are (Così come sei) with Marcello Mastroianni, gaining her recognition in the United States after New Line Cinema released it there in December 1979. Time wrote that she was "simply ravishing, genuinely sexy and high-spirited without being painfully aggressive about it."[14] The film also received a major international release from Columbia Pictures.

Kinski met the director Roman Polanski at a party in 1976.[15] He urged her to study method acting with Lee Strasberg in the United States and she was offered the title role in Polanski's upcoming film, Tess (1979). In 1978, Kinski underwent extensive preparation for the portrayal of an English peasant girl, which included acquiring a Dorset accent through elocution studies:

Nastassja Kinski with John Savage and Yoni S. Hamenachem on the set of Maria's Lovers (1984)

The film was nominated for six awards, including Best Picture, at the 53rd Academy Awards, and won three.

In 1981, Richard Avedon photographed Kinski with a Burmese python coiled around her nude body.[5] The image, which first appeared in the October 1981 issue of US Vogue, was released as a poster and became a best-seller, further confirming her status as a sex symbol.[17]

In 1982, she starred in Francis Ford Coppola's romantic musical One from the Heart, her first film made in the United States.[18] Texas Monthly described her as acting "as a Felliniesque circus performer to represent the twinkling evanescence of Eros."[19] The film failed at the box office and was a major loss for Coppola's new Zoetrope Studios. That year, she was also in the erotic horror movie Cat People. Dudley Moore's comedy Unfaithfully Yours and an adaptation of John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire followed in 1984.

Nastassja Kinski in 1989
Nastassja Kinski in July 2015

Kinski reteamed with Wenders for the 1984 film Paris, Texas. One of her most acclaimed films to date, it won the top award at the Cannes Film Festival. Throughout the 1980s, Kinski split her time between Europe and the United States, making Moon in the Gutter (1983), Harem (1985) and Torrents of Spring (1989) in Europe, and Exposed (1983), Maria's Lovers (1984) and Revolution (1985) in the United States.

During the 1990s, Kinski appeared in a number of American films, including the action movie Terminal Velocity opposite Charlie Sheen, the Mike Figgis 1997 adultery tale One Night Stand, Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), John Landis' Susan's Plan (1998), and The Lost Son (1999).

Her most recent films include David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006) and Rotimi Rainwater's Sugar (2013). In 2016, she competed in the German Let's Dance show.[20]

Personal life

Relationships

In 1976, when Kinski was 15, she was reportedly abused by then 43-year-old director Roman Polanski. Some sources refer to this as a relationship but Kinski was a minor and Polanski was nearly 30 years her senior.[21][22][23][24][25] In a 1999 Guardian interview, she was quoted as saying that there was categorically no affair and that, "There was a flirtation. There could have been a seduction, but there was not. He had respect for me."[7]

Marriage and children

In the mid-1980s, Kinski met the Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Moussa. They married on 10 September 1984. They have two children together; a son Aljosha (born 1984),[26] and daughter Sonja Kinski (born 1986), who works as a model and actress. The marriage was dissolved in 1992. From 1992 until 1995, Kinski lived with musician Quincy Jones, though she kept her own apartment on Hilgard Avenue, near UCLA, at the time.[27] In 1993, they had a daughter, Kenya Julia Miambi Sarah Jones,[28] a model known professionally as Kenya Kinski-Jones.[29]

Health

In 2001, Kinski stated in an interview for The Daily Telegraph she was affected by the sleep disorder narcolepsy.[30]

Awards and nominations

Selected filmography

References

  1. John Sandford (ed) (2001), Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture (Routledge world reference): 340
  2. "Der Spiegel report on Kinski". Spiegel.de. 15 March 1961. Retrieved 18 April 2010.
  3. The Francis Ford Coppola Encyclopedia.
  4. Davidson, John E. Deterritorializing the New German Cinema, Regents of the University of Minnesota, 1999, p. 80
  5. 1 2 3 4 Welsh, James Michael; Gene D. Phillips; Rodney Hill. The Francis Ford Coppola Encyclopedia, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press Inc., 2010, p. 154
  6. "Obituaries - Klaus Kinski, Polish-Born Actor Who Starred In Werner Herzog Films - Seattle Times Newspaper".
  7. 1 2 3 "Daddy's Girl". London: Guardian. 3 July 1999. Retrieved 18 April 2010.
  8. Jackson, Patrick (10 January 2013). "German actor Klaus Kinski 'abused his daughter Pola'". BBC News Online. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  9. Roxborough, Scott (9 January 2013). "Klaus Kinski's Daughter Claims He Sexually Abused Her". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  10. Biss, Malta (13 January 2013). "Jetzt spricht Nastassja". Bild. Retrieved 13 January 2013.
  11. 1 2 Jenkins, David (6 February 2015). "Nastassja Kinski interview: 'I've had such low self-esteem'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 9 June 2016.
  12. Dollar, Steve (1 March 2015). "Fresh Takes on Director Wim Wenders". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
  13. Nastassja Kinski interview with Louise Farr. "Kinski Business", W, May 1997.
  14. R.S. (21 January 1980). "Cinema: Bedrock Taboo". TIME. Retrieved 18 April 2010.
  15. "After 'Tess' and Roman Polanski, Nastassia Kinski trades notoriety for L.A. Propriety". People. 13 April 1981. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  16. "Working From The Heart: The Career Of Nastassja Kinski". Roger Ebert. 25 November 2014. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  17. Savill, Richard (2009). "Nastassja Kinski snake print to go on sale". The Daily Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  18. Coppola, Francis Ford; Phillips, Gene D.; Hill, Rodney. Francis Ford Coppola: Interviews, Univ. Press of Mississippi, (2004) p. 136
  19. Texas Monthly, March 1982 p. 175
  20. Schauspielerin Nastassja Kinski, hier beim 11. Semperopernball in Dresden, wagt sich bei „Let’s Dance“ aufs Parkett : Die ersten Kandidaten für die neunte Staffel der Tanzshow „Let’s Dance“ stehen fest: Schauspielerin Nastassja Kinski, Schlagersänger Michael Wendler, Sängerin Sarah Lombardi und Moderator Niels Ruf, welt.de; accessed 19 December 2016.(in German)
  21. Lester, Peter (13 April 1981). "After 'Tess' and Roman Polanski, Nastassia Kinski Trades Notoriety for L.A. Propriety". Time Magazine.
  22. Curtis, Bryan (3 October 2009). "Roman's Holiday Where has Polanski been hiding?". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
  23. Gumbel, Andrew (1 March 2003). "Roman Polanski: Cinema's demonic chronicler of the Holocaust". London: The Independent.
  24. Goodwin, Christopher (13 April 2008). "Wanted and Desired: a film that has shone new light on a murky affair". London, UK: TimesOnline UK.
  25. Sandford, Christopher (25 August 2007). "The dark secrets of Roman Polanski". London: Daily Mail.
  26. "An Exultant Nastassja Kinski Shows Off Her Healthy Son—and Her Future Husband". People. 23 July 1984. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
  27. Daily Bruin, Monday, 16 January 1995, p. 8
  28. Docherty, Cameron (26 September 1997). "Nastassja Kinski: Still a daddy's girl". London: Independent.co.uk. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
  29. Simon, Samantha (15 February 2007). "13 Things to Know About Our Style Crush Kenya Kinski-Jones". InStyle. Retrieved 25 April 2017.
  30. Jenkins, David (8 January 2001). "Kith and Kinski". London: The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 22 April 2013.
  31. Ellis, Bill. Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media, The University Press of Kentucky, 2000, p. 159
  32. Bock, Hans-Michael; Tim Bergfelder. The Concise Cinegraph: Encyclopedia of German Cinema, Berghahn Books, 2009, p. 360
  33. "Cosi' come sei (1978)". The New York Times.
  34. Mazierska, Ewa Nabokov's Cinematic Afterlife, MacFarland and Company Jefferson, North Carolina 2011 page 48

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