Nastassja Kinski is a German actress. Recipient Bundespreis (German film award) for Symphony of Love, 1983.
Background
Kinski, Nastassja was born on January 24, 1960 in Berlin. Daughter of Klaus G. and Ruth Brigitte (Tocki) Kinski. She was also Klaus Kinski’s daughter. The family lived together for some eight years before divorce. There was a time when she did not speak to her father—vet talking to Klaus Kinski was never enough.
Career
She was silent in Wrong Movement (75, Wim Wenders); To the Devil—A Daughter (76, Peter Sykes); Reifenzeugnis (76, Wolfgang Petersen); Boarding School (78, Andre Farwagi); Stay As You Are (78, Alberto Lattuada); verv accomplished and touching as Tess (79, Roman Polanski); the circus girl in One From the Heart (82, Francis Ford Coppola); daringly sensual and often naked as the released sexual urge in Cat People (82, Schrader); as Clara Wieck in Spring Symphony (83, Peter Sehamoni); The Moon in the Gutter (83, Jean-Jacques Beneix); her body plaved by violinist Rudolph Nureyevs bow in Exposed (83, Toback); the old Linda Darnell role in Unfaithfully Yours (84, Howard Zieff), her childishness awoken by Dudley Moore; at her best in Paris, Texas (84, Wenders); The Hotel New Hampshire (84, Tony Richardson); Maria's Lovers (84, Andrei Konchalovsky); Revolution (85, Hugh Hudson); and Harem (85, Arthur Joffe).
There have been more films, made in Europe, but only a few are notable: Intervista (87, Federico Fellini); Torrents of Spring (88, Jerzy Skolimowsld); Night Sun (90, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani); and Faraway. So Close (93, Wenders).
Her moment has passed, but she is better looking than ever—for she was only forty in 2000! She makes so many films, some for TV, some that never get a proper release, some because she will do nudity, some that give her a real part, some that are first-time directors looking for a name, and some that mean costarring with Charlie Sheen— thus Terminal Velocity (94, Derail Sarafian); Crackeijack (94, Michael Mazo); Somebody Is Waiting (96. Martin Donovan); The Ring (96, Eddv Marshall); Fathers Day (97, Ivan Reitman); One Night Stand (97, Mike Figgis); Bella Mafia (97, David Greene); Little Boy Blue (97, Antonio Tibaldi); Savior (98, Predrag Antonijevic); good in Your Friends & Neighbors (98, Neil LaBute); Susan's Plan (98, )olm Landis); Playing by Heart (98, Willard Carroll); Ciro Norte (98, Ivan Cardoso); The Lost Son (99, Chris Menges); The Intruder (99, David Bailey); Quarantine (99, Chuck Bowman); A Storm in Summer (00, Robert Wise); The Magic of Marciano (00, Tony Barbieri); Bed Letters (00, Bradley Battersby); Time Share (00, Sharon von Wietersheim); excellent in The Claim (01, Michael Winterbottom); Cold lb art (01, Dennis Rimster); Blind Terror (01, Giles Walker); Town & Country (01, Peter Chel- som); An American Rhapsody (01, Eva Gardos); A Woman in Love (01, Giorgio Serafini); Say Nothing (01, Allan Moyle).
There was a moment, in the early eighties, when Kinski was the rage, a sensation . . . the most beautiful girl in the world. Her greatest interest may lie in pioneering the new brevity of such rages.
In May 1982, she was on the cover of Rolling Stone, in one of several Avedon photographs that showed her naked and tousled in bed. John Simon’s text began: “I ask myself what makes Nastassia Kinski, at twenty-one, the biggest sex symbol of 1982, and perhaps of many years to come ..." The piece went on—as if Simon had been in that bed with Kinski—“The breasts are perfect, though some might think them a bit small, pubescent; over the youthfully querying eyes, the brows are adult and ripely female. Or consider the voice: high and trilling one instant, then, suddenly, overcast, sensually clouded, as if a dark velvet hood descended protectively over some precious crystal object. The walk is emphatic: a very feminine presence approaching with masculine directness . . .”
But the rage wasn’t just John Simon and Rolling Stone. Avedon photographed Kinski with a python—the reptile and the lady in just their shining skins. Paul Schrader, in love with Kinski, said she was like the young Ingrid Bergman. Time put her on its cover: the profile writer, Richard Corliss, called her “Nasty . Director James Toback told the press that Norman Mailer had told him she had a quality like Monroes.
She was lovely, uncertain, trickv, and helplessly seductive. Yet she was somehow frozen, too, as if waiting to be memorialized in still photographs, conscious of the huge effect she was having. She had vague plans for more training, for theatre, and for a career. But it seemed plain that she was the victim of the speed with which her life was moving, the eroticism of allowing oneself to be looked at, and the sheer perishability of such intensity.
Connections
She married and had children. Later on, she moved in with musician Quincy Jones and had another child.