Nastassja Kinski

Born Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski in West Berlin^[3] she is the daughter of German actor Klaus Kinski^[4] and his second wife, actress Ruth Brigitte Tocki.^[5] She is of partial Polish descent, for her grandfather Bruno Nakszynski was a Germanized ethnic Pole.^[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 young 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 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 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."^[10]

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 mute Mignon in Wim Wenders 1975 film The Wrong Move,^[11] in which at the age of 13 she was depicted topless.^[11][12] She later played one of the leading roles in Wenders' film Paris, Texas (1984) and appeared in his film Faraway, So Close (1993).

In 1976, while still a teenager, Kinski had her first two major roles. She played Sina Wolf in Wolfgang Petersen's feature film-length episode Reifezeugnis of the German TV crime series Tatort, and played Catherine Beddows in the horror film To the Devil a Daughter (1976), co-produced by Hammer Film Productions and Terra Film. The film 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."^[13]

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."^[14] The film also received a major international release from Columbia Pictures.

Kinski met the director Roman Polanski at a party in 1976.^[15] 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 Fleming. 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.^[16]

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

On 14 June 1981, Vogue editor Polly Allen Mellen asked Nastassja Kinski what she liked and Kinski replied,^[17] "snakes,"^[18][19] then a Burmese python was hired for the photoshoot with Richard Avedon, with resulting photograph of Kinski with a Burmese python^[20] coiled^[21] around her nude body, "Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent, Los Angeles, California, June 14, 1981".^[22][23][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.^[24]

In 1982, she starred in Francis Ford Coppola's romantic musical One from the Heart, her first film made in the United States.^[25] Texas Monthly described her as acting "as a Felliniesque circus performer to represent the twinkling evanescence of Eros."^[26] 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 29 December 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.)

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. 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.^[27]

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's 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.^[28]

In recent years, Kinski has once again appeared in several German film productions, including Dark Satellites (2022) and LasVegas (2023).

In June 2026, following years of campaigning by Kinski, Wim Wenders agreed to withdraw Wrong Move from distribution, and apologised to her for the "sexualised" scene he had filmed of her when she was 13.^[29]

In 1976, when Kinski was aged 15, it was speculated that there had been a romantic relationship with director Roman Polanski, who at the time was 43.^{[30][31][32][33]} Polanski confirmed the relationship in a 1994 interview with Diane Sawyer: "...what about Nastassja Kinski? She was young and we had a love affair."^[34] However, in a 1999 interview in The Guardian, Kinski was quoted as saying that there was no affair and that "there was a flirtation. There could have been a seduction, but there was not. He had respect for me."^[7]

Kinski has three children from different relationships. Her first child, a son, was fathered by actor Vincent Spano, her co-star in Maria's Lovers.^[35][36] On 10 September 1984, Kinski married Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Moussa, with whom she had daughter Sonja Kinski. The marriage was dissolved in July 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.^[37] They had a daughter, Kenya Julia Niambi Sarah Jones,^[38] a model known professionally as Kenya Kinski-Jones.^[39]

In 1997, Kinski dated married producer Jonathan D. Krane during a brief separation from his wife, actress Sally Kellerman.^[40] Over the course of her career, Kinski has also been romantically linked with Paul Schrader, Jean-Jacques Beineix, Rob Lowe, Jon Voight, Gérard Depardieu, Dudley Moore, Miloš Forman and Wim Wenders.^[41] As of 2012, she was dating actor Rick Yune.

In 2001, Kinski stated in an interview in The Daily Telegraph that she was affected by the sleep disorder narcolepsy.^[42]

Quick facts Awards and nominations, Award ...

Nastassja Kinski awards

Awards and nominations Award Wins Nominations AFF Awards 1 1 Bambi Awards 1 1 Bravo Ottos 2 3 César Awards 0 2 DF Awards 2 3 Globo d'oro 0 1 Golden Globes 1 2 Jupiter Awards 1 1 Nastro d'Argento 1 1 Saturn Awards 0 1 UFCA Awards 0 1 WCFF Awards 1 1
Totals[a]
Wins	10
Nominations	18
Note [a] Certain award groups do not simply award one winner. They acknowledge several different recipients, have runners-up, and have third place. Since this is a specific recognition and is different from losing an award, runner-up mentions are considered wins in this award tally. For simplification and to avoid errors, each award in this list has been presumed to have had a prior nomination.

Close

The awards and nominations received by Nastassja Kinski include one Art Film Fest Award, one Bambi Award, two Bravo Ottos (out of three nominations), two Deutscher Filmpreis Awards (also out of three nominations), one Golden Globe (out of two nominations), one Jupiter Award, one Nastro d'Argento Award and one Wine Country Film Festival Award.

Among others, her achievements in film industry include also two César Awards nominations, one Globo d'oro nomination, and one Saturn Award nomination.