Nastassja Kinski

Posted May 11, 200817 yr

Nastassja Kinski

Nastassja Kinski (born Nastassja Aglaia Nakszyński, January 24, 1961) is a prolific German actress, having appeared in more than 60 movies. Her starring roles include her Golden Globe Award-winning portrayal of 'Tess Durbeyfield' in Roman Polanski's film Tess and her parts in Wim Wenders' films The Wrong Move, Paris, Texas, and Faraway, So Close!. During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s Nastassja Kinski was widely regarded as an international sex symbol.

Was married to Ibrahim Moussa (10 September 1984 - 1992).

Has a son, Aljosha Moussa (b. 1984), and a daughter, Sonja Kinski (b. as Sonja Moussa in 1986), with Ibrahim Moussa.

Her daughter Kenya Julia Miambi Sarah Jones, with Quincy Jones, was born in 1993.

Biography

Born in Berlin, Kinski is the daughter of the late German actor Klaus Kinski from his marriage to actress Ruth Brigitte Tocki. Her parents divorced in 1968. Kinski rarely saw her father after the age of 10. Kinski and her mother struggled financially.[1] Eventually they ended up living in a commune in Munich.

Kinski's foray into the spotlight began in her native Germany where she started out as a model. At the age of 13, the German New Wave actress Lisa Kreuzer placed her in the role of the dumb Mignon in Wim Wenders' film The Wrong Move. In her mid-teens she starred in the British Hammer Film Productions' horror film To the Devil a Daughter (1976). Kinski has gained a certain notoriety through her nude appearances in these films whilst still a minor. This is linked to another controversy as to the exact year of her birth, which was apparently reported to the American authorities as 1959, though German records show that she was actually born in 1961. (Variety states that she was born in 1960.) She has since stated that as a child she felt exploited by the industry and told a journalist from W Magazine, "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 also starred in an erotic film Stay as you are (1978) with Marcello Mastroianni. New Line Cinema released this film in the United States in December 1979, helping Kinski to get more recognition in the United States. (Even TIME Magazine praised Kinski's performance in this film: "Kinski is simply ravishing, genuinely sexy and high-spirited without being painfully aggressive about it.")

At 15 Kinski began a romantic relationship with director Roman Polanski, 28 years her senior. Polanski urged her to study acting with Lee Strasberg in the U.S.A. and went on to cast her in his film, Tess (1979). Shortly after this on-screen success, photographer Richard Avedon photographed Kinski with a serpent coiled around her naked body (1981).

In 1982 Kinski appeared as "Leila" the 'circus girl' in the Francis Ford Coppola/Dean Tavoularis collaboration One from the Heart which bankrupted Coppola's American Zoetrope studio. In 1982 she made the hit movie Cat People, and then the films Unfaithfully Yours, and The Hotel New Hampshire, which performed poorly at the box office and with critics. Critics praised her performance in Paris, Texas, and the film won awards at Cannes, but in the U.S the film was not widely released. Kinski then split her time between Europe and the United States, making Moon in the Gutter (1983), Harem (1985) and Torrents of Spring (1989) in the former, and Exposed (1983), Maria's Lovers (1984) and Revolution (1985) in the latter. Kinski's luck turned in the 1990s when she appeared in films such as Terminal Velocity opposite Charlie Sheen and Mike Figgis' critically acclaimed One Night Stand.

In the mid-1980s Kinski met Egyptian film maker Ibrahim Moussa. They married on September 10, 1984. Together they raised Aljosha (born June 29, 1984), whose biological father is Vincent Spano[citation needed] and daughter Sonja Leila, now a model, who was born on March 2, 1986. The marriage was formally dissolved by divorce in 1992. From 1991 until 1997 Kinski lived with music impresario Quincy Jones. On February 9, 1993 their daughter Kenya Julia Miambi Sara was born.