Nastassja Kinski

Nastassja Aglaia Kinski ( born 24 January 1961) is a German actress and former model who has appeared in more than 60 films in Europe and the United States. Her worldwide breakthrough was with Stay as You Are (1978). She then came to global prominence with her Golden Globe Award-winning performance as the title character in the Roman Polanski-directed film Tess (1979). Other notable films in which she acted include the erotic horror film Cat People (1982), the Wim Wenders dramas Paris, Texas (1984) and Faraway, So Close! (1993), and the biographical drama film An American Rhapsody (2001). Kinski is fluent in four languages: German, English, French and Italian. She is the daughter of German actor Klaus Kinski.

Early life

Kinski was born in West Berlin as Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski. She is the daughter of renowned German actor Klaus Kinski and his second wife, actress Ruth Brigitte Tocki. She is of partial Polish descent, for her grandfather Bruno Nakszynski was a Germanized ethnic Pole. 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; 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". In 2013, when interviewed about the allegations of sexual abuse made by her half-sister Pola Kinski, she confirmed that he attempted 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."