Nastassja Kinski, 1981
Photo by Richard Avedon
Nastassja Kinski is 62 years old today.
A German actress and former model, Kinski has appeared in more than sixty films in Europe and the United States. Her starring roles include the title character in Tess (1979), and her role in Paris, Texas (1984). It is one of a number of films she made with the German director, Wim Wenders.
Born in Berlin as Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski, Kinski is the daughter of the German actor Klaus Kinski and his wife, actress Ruth Brigitte Tocki. She is of part Polish descent. 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 dumb Mignon in Wim Wenders film, The Wrong Move. In 1976, while still a teenager, Kinski had her first two major roles. One was in Wolfgang Petersen's feature-film length episode, Reifezeugnis, of the German TV crime series, Tatort.
Next she appeared in the British horror film, To the Devil a Daughter (1976), produced by Hammer Film Productions.
In 1981, Richard Avedon photographed Kinski with a Burmese python coiled around her nude body. The image was marketed as a poster.
From 1992 until 1995, Kinski lived with musician Quincy Jones, though she kept her own apartment on Hilgard Avenue, near UCLA, at the time.
In 1993 they had a daughter, Kenya Julia Miambi Sarah Jones.