Nastassja Kinski

Actress

Birthday January 24, 1961

Birth Sign Aquarius

Birthplace West Berlin, West Germany

Age 63 years old

Nationality Germany

Height 1.69 m

#4572 Most Popular

1953

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

1961

Nastassja Aglaia Kinski (, ; born 24 January 1961) is a German actress and former model who has appeared in more than 60 films in Europe and the United States.

1968

Her parents divorced in 1968.

After the age of 10, Kinski rarely saw her father.

Her young mother struggled financially to support them; they eventually lived in a commune in Munich.

1975

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, in which at the age of 13 she was depicted topless.

1976

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."

Kinski met the director Roman Polanski at a party in 1976.

1978

Her worldwide breakthrough was with Stay as You Are (1978).

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."

The film also received a major international release from Columbia Pictures.

In 1978, Kinski underwent extensive preparation for the portrayal of an English peasant girl, which included acquiring a Dorset accent through elocution studies:

1979

She then came to global prominence with her Golden Globe Award-winning performance as the title character in the Roman Polanski-directed film Tess (1979).

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).

1981

In 1981, Richard Avedon photographed Kinski with a Burmese python coiled around her nude body.

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.

1982

Other films in which she acted include the Francis Ford Coppola's musicial romance film One from the Heart (1982), erotic horror film Cat People (1982) from Paul Schrader and the Wim Wenders drama films Paris, Texas (1984) and Faraway, So Close! (1993).

In 1982, she starred in Francis Ford Coppola's romantic musical One from the Heart, her first film made in the United States.

Texas Monthly described her as acting "as a Felliniesque circus performer to represent the twinkling evanescence of Eros."

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 supernatural horror movie Cat People.

On December 29, 1982, Kinski made a puzzling appearance on the program Late Night with David Letterman, seeming somewhat oblivious to the jokes and everything else that was going on around her and appearing with an unusual hair style Letterman described as "looking like there was an owl perched on top of her head."

(Letterman's second guest, John Candy, came out with his own hair moussed up in a pile as a spoof of Kinski's hair.)

1984

She later played one of the leading roles in Wenders' film Paris, Texas (1984) and appeared in his film Faraway, So Close (1993).

Dudley Moore's comedy Unfaithfully Yours and an adaptation of John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire followed in 1984.

Kinski reteamed with Wenders for the 1984 film Paris, Texas.

1999

In a 1999 interview, Kinski denied that her father had molested her as a child, but said he had abused her "in other ways".

2001

She also appeared in the biographical drama film An American Rhapsody (2001).

She is the daughter of German actor Klaus Kinski.

Kinski was born in West Berlin as Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski.

She is the daughter of renowned German actor Klaus Kinski and his second wife, actress Ruth Brigitte Tocki.

She is of partial Polish descent, for her grandfather Bruno Nakszynski was a Germanized ethnic Pole.

Kinski has two half-siblings: Pola and Nikolai Kinski.

2013

In 2013, when interviewed about the allegations of sexual abuse made by her half-sister Pola Kinski, she confirmed that he attempted this with her, but did not succeed.

She said, "He was no father. Ninety-nine percent of the time I was terrified of him. He was so unpredictable that the family lived in constant terror."

When asked what she would say to him now, if she had the chance, she replied, "I would do anything to put him behind bars for life. I am glad he is no longer alive."

Kinski began working as a model as a teenager in Germany.