Career
Her career began in Germany as a model. After this the German New Wave actress Lisa Kreuzer placed her in the role of the dumb Mignon in Wim Wenders' film The Wrong Move. In 1976 she had her first major role in the feature length film and Wolfgang Petersen directed episode Reifezeugnis of the German TV crime series Tatort. Also in 1976, in her mid-teens, she starred in the British Hammer Film Productions' horror film To the Devil a Daughter (1976). She has 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 starred in Stay As You Are (1978) with Marcello Mastroianni. New Line Cinema released it in the United States in December 1979, helping Kinski to get more recognition there. Time magazine said: "Kinski is simply ravishing, genuinely sexy and high-spirited without being painfully aggressive about it." Director Roman Polanski urged Kinski to study acting with Lee Strasberg in the United States and cast her in his film, Tess (1979). In 1981, photographer Richard Avedon photographed Kinski with a Burmese python coiled around her naked body.
In 1982, she appeared in One from the Heart, and Cat People, and then Unfaithfully Yours, and The Hotel New Hampshire. Paris, Texas won awards at Cannes, however, the film was not widely released in the United States. 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 Europe and Exposed (1983), Maria's Lovers (1984) and Revolution (1985) in the U.S. Kinski's luck turned in the 1990s when she appeared in films such as Terminal Velocity opposite Charlie Sheen, and Mike Figgis' One Night Stand.
In One From the Heart, director Francis Ford Coppola brought Kinski to the U.S. to act as a "Felliniesque circus performer to represent the twinkling evanescence of Eros. . . Kinski has one great moment in the film, when she seductively curls up in a giant neon-rimmed martini glass. . ." The film failed at the box office and was a major loss for Coppola's new studio, Zoetrope Studios. Other appearances include Somebody Is Waiting (1996), Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), John Landis' Susan's Plan (1998), The Lost Son (1999), and Inland Empire (2006).
Read more about this topic: Nastassja Kinski
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