Nastassja Kinski, actress: biography, personal life, filmography

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

People who are familiar with German cinema might think that the biography of Nastassja Kinski has developed so thanks to her father, actor Klaus Kinski. But this is not true at all.

Nastasya can be called a woman who "created herself." Her father did not pave the way for her on the stage or on the set.

But still, he gave her, and her brother and sister, the genetic makeup required to reach the top of the world of cinema. Having no connections there, the young girl managed to prove herself and succeed.

In this article we will talk about the difficult childhood of the actress, her wild youth and balanced maturity. We will also give a short analysis of the films in which Kinski starred.

What is Nastasya working on now? And what is the personal life of the actress? If she has children? We will also devote attention to this issue.

Early childhood

MotherlandNastassja Kinski - Germany, or rather, West Berlin. Her father, German actor Klaus Karl Günther Kinski, met a simple 20-year-old saleswoman Ruth Brigitte Totsky and married her. This was his second marriage.

Before Totsky, Kinski was married to Gizlinde Külbeck, who in 1952 gave him a daughter, Paula. The marriage to a saleswoman from West Berlin also did not last. Already in 1969, the actor married a Vietnamese student, Minha Genevieve Loanic, whom he met at a party in Rome.

From her, Nastasya had (in 1976) a half-brother Nicholas. And at the end of his life, the windy Klaus Kinski was married to actress Deborah Caprioglio. In fact, at birth, the children bore the real name of their father - Nakszynski, since he had Polish roots and was born in Sopot (near Gdansk). At the time when his youngest daughter was born, and this happened on January 24, 1961, Klaus Kinski was fond of Russian classical literature. He decided to name the newborn girl Nastasya Aglaya - in honor of two characters in Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" at once.

In 1968, the parents of the future actress separated. The girl stayed with her mother.

Fatal role of the father?

Perhaps Klaus Nakszynski did not accidentally play the role of psychopaths in films. In 1988, to stir up public interest in his person, the actor published his memoirs under the title Kinski Uncut.

The cover of this book features a photograph taken in 1972 of Nastassja Kinski in the arms of her father. In his memoirs, the actor unambiguously alludes to incestuousbonding with his teenage daughter.

Nastasya called it a dirty lie, but admitted in an interview that her father was a "strange person." Even more evidence that the actor who died in 1991 was a pedophile who raped his daughters was given by Nastasya's sister, Paula.

In 2013, she released a book of her own memoirs, Through the Mouth of a Baby, where she directly accuses her father of this perversion. Nastya commented on this information evasively: she said that she “cried a lot when she read the book”, and also “considers her sister a heroine, because she found the strength to declare it.”

When asked if Paula suffered the same fate, the actress admitted that her father sexually harassed her. One way or another, both sisters did not attend the funeral of their father.

Boyhood

After the divorce, the mother and daughter were frankly in poverty. Nastasya lived in Munich, and for a year (from 1971 to 1972) - in the capital of Venezuela, Caracas. The mother did not work, but connected her life with her lover, who also did not want to work.

The family first lived by selling the things left in the house, then moved to a van. Nastassja Aglaya Nakszynski had to steal groceries in stores to feed herself.

On public transport, she traveled "hare", for which she was repeatedly fined. But the girl evaded paying them. This eventually led to the fact that the aspiring actress was arrested right at the airport when she returned to Munich after filming "Be Yourself".

She had to spend three months in a juvenile colony. In 1977 NastasyaShe left her studies at the Munich Gymnasium named after Willi Graf, because the education of a crazy girl was difficult. As the actress herself admitted, in her teens she led a hectic life, and went to parties every night.

Connection with Polanski

There is another common myth about Nastassja Kinski's career. Say, the famous director and producer Roman Polanski made her way to the cinema. There really was a love affair between him and the actress.

But a year before meeting Polanski, Nastassja made her debut in Wim Wenders' German film False Movement (1975). There, the actress played the silent role of the autistic girl Mignon.

The result (and end) of that three-year novel is the film "Tess" - a film adaptation of the novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy. Polanski took the girl to America to improve her acting technique at the Lee Strasberg Academy, and then decided to entrust her with the central image in Tess.

Kinski once posed for Vogue magazine. But it was Polanski who was the guest editor there. Later, the director recalled that, just then, looking at the girl, he thought that she would be “the perfect Tess.”

When a sexual scandal broke out around Polanski, the actress supported the accused, assuring that then it was not seduction on his part, but just flirting.

Nastassja Kinski: films of the early years

As the heroine of our story herself assures, lack of money prompted her to act in films. Feefor the role without words in "False Movement" was scanty, but it was this work that gave her career a powerful start.

For her, she was awarded the Deutscher Filmpreis Award for Outstanding Achievement. In this film, the actress is also noted under her real name Nakszynski. She later adopted her father's creative name.

And he, in turn, “shortened” his surname to evoke association with the aristocratic Czech family of Kinsky. The next two films were also fruitful. For the role of a schoolgirl and teacher's mistress in "Matriculation" (1977), aspiring actress Nastassja Kinski received the Bambi Award.

In the same year, she played in the first English-language film "Satan's Daughter". But world fame brought her work in "The Way You Are", with Marcello Mastroianni.

Gradually, the role of the actress emerged - a teenage girl in a love affair with an adult man. In all of her early films, Kinski was shown naked. Soon, the actress was offered her first major role - in the comedy film Passion Flower Hotel.

Tess

Fleeting acquaintance under dubious circumstances Nastasya with Polansky grew into a long friendship. Back in 1976, the director had the idea for a film adaptation of Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

But before offering the young actress the lead role, he, as mentioned above, sent her to acquire professional stage education in Los Angeles. After 6 months of training there, Nastassja Kinski moved to Dorset, where the events describedThomas Hardy.

She lived on a farm where she milked cows and worked to acquire the manners of a peasant woman. Living in Dorset also helped her get rid of her German accent.

The success of Tess gave Kinski worldwide recognition. She won a Golden Globe and was nominated for a Cesar.

Other films from the 80s

At the Cannes Film Festival, the actress met Francis Coppola, who offered her the role of a circus tightrope walker in From the Heart (1982). In the same year, Kinski plays Cat People.

This work earned her a Saturn Award nomination. Later, roles in "In View" and "Spring Symphony" followed. Since the mid-80s, the actress has been leaving mainstream cinema for a while and is participating in art-house films.

Nastassja Kinski is filming with Wenders in "Paris, Texas" and "So Far, So Close", with A. Konchalovsky in "Mary's Beloved" and "The Potudan River".

Known for her roles in the film adaptation of Turgenev's story "Spring Waters" and Dostoevsky's novel "The Humiliated and Insulted".

Recent works of the actress

Perestroika and the interest of the world community in Russia in the early 90s brought success to those films starring Nastassja Kinski. But the role in "Humiliated and Insulted" was also the beginning of the sunset of the star.

In 1993, she also starred in the arthouse film So Far, So Close. But since the mid-90s, she was offered only minor roles in Hollywood action films, which received rather low marks from film critics.

To thisThe period includes the work of the actress in "Falling Speed", "Violator", "One Night Stand", "American Rhapsody", "The Godmother". Then there were minor roles in television series.

Her last appearance on the big screen was the movie Inland Empire. It is known that one lengthy scene involving the actress was cut during editing.

Nastassja Kinski: personal life

Despite her broken youth, the actress took her choice of companion seriously. They became producer Ibrahim Musa, an American with Egyptian roots. He was 15 years older than Kinsky.

Before getting married, the actress gave birth to a son, whom she gave the Russian name Alyosha (July 1984). Two months later, the couple officially married. Kinski met her husband while filming From the Heart and Cat People.

In 1986 the family moved to Switzerland. Daughter Sonya Leila was born there. Now she is a fashion model. Several times the family went to Egypt to see the parents of Ibrahim Musa.

Kinski said about her husband that he is a very liberal Muslim, he never demanded that she change her faith and did not impose closed clothes. Nevertheless, the actress left him in 1991 for the American composer Quincy Jones.

The couple did not formalize their relationship. But as a result of living together with a man who was 28 years older than the actress, in 1993 Nastasya Kinski's daughter was born, who was named Kenya Julia Miamba Sarah.

Awards

Despite the fact thatthe actress is no longer acting, she left a significant mark in the cinema. Her sister Paula, brother Klaus, and cousin Lara Nakszynski are also famous performers.

Nastasia herself was twice a laureate of the German Deutsche Filmprice award (in 1975 and 1983). She also received a Golden Globe Award (in 1981).