Nastassja Kinski

Nastassja Kinski

Nastassja Kinski in 2009
Born Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski
(1961-01-24) 24 January 1961
Berlin, Germany
Nationality German
Occupation Actress, model
Years active 1975–present
Spouse(s) Ibrahim Moussa (m. 1984–92)
Partner(s) Quincy Jones (1992–95)
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. She enjoyed her worldwide breakthrough 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 Cat People (1982), two Wim Wenders dramas; Paris, Texas (1984) and Faraway, So Close! (1993), and An American Rhapsody (2001). She is the daughter of the actor Klaus Kinski.

Early life

Kinski was born in Berlin as Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski.[3] She is the daughter of the German-Polish actor Klaus Kinski[4] and his wife, actress Ruth Brigitte Tocki.[5] She is of Polish descent. Her family is Germanized ethnic Poles.[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 sexually 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:

“ "He was no father. 99 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."[10] ”

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 dumb Mignon in Wim Wenders film The Wrong Move. 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. 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."[11]

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."[12] The film also received a major international release from Columbia Pictures.

Kinski met the director Roman Polanski at a party in 1976.[13] 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:

“ I was given the book almost a year prior to read, I then had to transform myself and lose my German accent completely. I worked with a coach from the National Theatre in London, Kate Flemming. It was almost an intellectual voyage. [...] I went to live in the countryside of the deep part of England, on a farm, did everything they did, and learned it. When the time came in Paris to do my test, it was with our director and our producers Claude Berri and Timothy Burrill, I had done a screen test with Roman prior to that, for Dino DeLaurentis, but now this was for Tess. Preparation is an amazing thing. It, somehow, after all the work, carries you if you are fully present, it carries you through like a bird, like big inner and outer wings.[14] ”
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.[15]

In 1982, she starred in Francis Ford Coppola's romantic musical One from the Heart, her first film made in the United States.[16] Texas Monthly described her as acting "as a Felliniesque circus performer to represent the twinkling evanescence of Eros."[17] 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
Kinski at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival
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.[18]

Personal life

Relationships

In 1976, when Kinski was 15, she reportedly began a romantic relationship with then 43-year-old director Roman Polanski.[19][20][21][22][23] In a 1999 Guardian interview, the newspaper reports her saying there was categorically no affair and that she said, "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),[24] 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.[25] In 1993, they had a daughter, Kenya Julia Miambi Sarah Jones.[26]

Health

In 2001, Kinski stated in an interview for the The Daily Telegraph she was affected by the sleep disorder narcolepsy.[27]

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. ↑ Nastassja Kinski interview with Louise Farr. "Kinski Business", W, May 1997.
  12. ↑ R.S. (21 January 1980). "Cinema: Bedrock Taboo". TIME. Retrieved 18 April 2010.
  13. ↑ "After 'Tess' and Roman Polanski, Nastassia Kinski trades notoriety for L.A. Propriety". People. 13 April 1981. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  14. ↑ "Working From The Heart: The Career Of Nastassja Kinski". Roger Ebert. 25 November 2014. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  15. ↑ Savill, Richard (2009). "Nastassja Kinski snake print to go on sale". The Daily Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  16. ↑ Coppola, Francis Ford; Phillips, Gene D.; Hill, Rodney. Francis Ford Coppola: Interviews, Univ. Press of Mississippi, (2004) p. 136
  17. ↑ Texas Monthly, March 1982 p. 175
  18. ↑ http://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article151728583/Nastassja-Kinski-zieht-die-Tanzschuhe-an.html
  19. ↑ Lester, Peter (13 April 1981). "After 'Tess' and Roman Polanski, Nastassia Kinski Trades Notoriety for L.A. Propriety". Time Magazine.
  20. ↑ Curtis, Bryan (3 October 2009). "Roman's Holiday Where has Polanski been hiding?". Slate Magazine.
  21. ↑ Gumbel, Andrew (1 March 2003). "Roman Polanski: Cinema's demonic chronicler of the Holocaust". London: The Independent.
  22. ↑ Goodwin, Christopher (13 April 2008). "Wanted and Desired: a film that has shone new light on a murky affair". London: TimesOnline UK.
  23. ↑ Sandford, Christopher (25 August 2007). "The dark secrets of Roman Polanski". London: The Los Angeles Times.
  24. ↑ "An Exultant Nastassja Kinski Shows Off Her Healthy Son—and Her Future Husband". People. 23 July 1984.
  25. ↑ Daily Bruin, Monday, 16 January 1995, p. 8
  26. ↑ Docherty, Cameron (26 September 1997). "Nastassja Kinski: Still a daddy's girl". London: Independent.co.uk. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
  27. ↑ Jenkins, David (8 January 2001). "Kith and Kinski". London: The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 22 April 2013.
  28. ↑ Ellis, Bill. Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media, The University Press of Kentucky, 2000, p. 159
  29. ↑ Bach, Hans-Michael; Tim Bergfelder. The Concise Cinegraph: Encyclopedia of German Cinema, Berghahn Books, 2009, p. 360
  30. ↑ "Cosi' come sei (1978)". The New York Times.
  31. ↑ Mazierska, Ewa Nabokov's Cinematic Afterlife MacFarland and Company Jefferson, North Carolina 2011 page 48
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