___________________________________________________
Born 1959 Actress
tess
1959:
1979:
1982:
1984:
1992:
1994:
filmography
main site
key dates
Born on 24 January in Berlin, Germany, daughter of actor Klaus Kinski
Appears in Tess
Appears in Cat People
Appears in Paris, Texas . Marries Ibrahim Moussa. 2 children
Divorces Moussa
Appears in Faraway, So Close!. Child with partner Quincy Jones
height:5' 6½" (1.69 m)
links
_____________________________________________________________________________
Tess (1979)
-
Born | Nastassja Nakszynski
Yet there was a moment, in the
early eighties, when Kinski was the rage, a
sensation . . . the most beautifial girl in the
world. Her greatest interest may be in pioneering the new brevity of such rages.
I suspect I wasn't alone in this but I thought that she was so beautiful that all I wanted was a girlfriend who looked remotely like her. In the end I settled for a Klaus Kinski lookalike but that's another story,
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:
The piece went on - as if Simon had been in
that bed with Kinski:
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.
I met Ms. Kinski, and she was lovely, uncertain, tricky, and helplessly seductive: it was
evident that she looked to every new movie
director as potential lover. 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 theater, 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.
What can one say after the sensation? That
she was like thousands of other young women? That she had an extraordinarily alert, waiting
gaze, enough to rivet other people and sway
the camera?
She was also Klaus Kinski's daughter. The
family lived together for some eight years
before divorce. What did that do to the child?
There was a time when she did not speak to
her father - yet talking to Klaus Kinski was
never enough.
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); very 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 Schamoni); The Moon in the
Gutter (83, Jean-Jacques Beneix); her body
played by violinist Rudolph Nureyev's 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).
It was over. She married and had children.
Later on, she moved in with musician Quincy
Jones and had another child. There have been
more films, made in Europe, bnt only a few
are notable: Intervista (87, Federico Fellini);
Torrents of Spring (88, Jerzy Skolimowski);
Night Sun (90, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani);
and Faraway, So Close (93, Wenders).
gallery | books | dvds | posters | videos
By the time 1993 came around, Ms. Kinski was still younger than,
say, Anjelica Huston was when Prizzi's Honor
opened. And yet even then Kinski had been
"gone" - with child, husband, retired, or in
minor films that do not open widely for several years. Since then, she has moved in the same ever decreasing circles until today she is but a rumour, a whisper, in the hallowed corridors of the screen gods.
"I ask myself
what makes Nastassia [remember that?] Kinski, at twenty-one, the biggest sex symbol of
1982, and perhaps of many years to come . . ."
"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 ..."
tess
