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The daughter of actor Klaus Kinski grew up in Berlin, Rome, and Munich. After her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Munich, then to Caracas, and back to Munich where she finished secondary school.
In 1974, Lisa Kreuzer discovered her for the voiceless role of Mignon in the film "Falsche Bewegung" ("False Movement"), directed by Wim Wenders. She then became known to a broad public in Wolfgang Petersen TV movie "Reifezeugnis", an episode of the "Tatort" crime film series. The German TV film was also internationally shown in moive theatres. After "Reifezeugnis", Kinski"s role offers were mainly restricted to the clichéd role of naive, seductive lolitas.
Kinski then met director Roman Polanski. She attended acting lessons from Lee Strasberg in New York and played the leading role in Polanski"s film "Tess", based on Thomas Hardy"s novel. Her precise portrayal of an innocent girl from the country that is led to commit a murder by the hypocritical morals of the Victorian society broke up the previous role cliché and also won Kinski several awards in 1980, including a César. She then starred in Paul Schrader"s remake of Jacques Tourneur"s "Cat People" and played the mysterious circus girl Leila in Francis Ford Coppola"s "One From The Heart".
Kinski then returned to Germany to play the pianist Clara Wieck in Peter Schamoni"s film "Frühlingssinfonie" ("Spring Symphony"), a performance that won her the German film award in 1983. So far, her most successful role was the part of the young, sought-after mother Jane in "Paris, Texas", directed by Wim Wenders.
Since then, Kinski has starred in several international, but less successful productions, and also in commercials. She returned to Germany in 1993 for a guest performance in "In weiter Ferne, so nah!" ("Faraway, So Close!"), directed by Wim Wenders. After a personal break, she resumed her movie career in 1996 in Hollywood.
From 1991 to 1997, Kinski was in a relationship with American musician Quincy Jones.
Other important films in her career were Mike Figgis' relationship drama "One Night Stand" (US 1997), Predrag Antonijevic's gritty Bosnian War drama "Savior" (US 1998), Michael Winterbottom's snowy western "The Claim" (GB/FR/CN 2000) and Peter Chelsom's top-class staffed screwball comedy "Town & Country" (US 2001). After the startling box office failure of the latter film, she appeared mainly in smaller productions and B-thrillers such as "Say Nothing" (CN/US 2001) and ".com for Murder" (US 2002).
In the three-part TV adaptation "Les liaisons dangereuses" ("Dangerous Liaisons", GB/FR/CN 2003), Kinski played Madame de Tourvel alongside Catherine Deneuve; in the two-part "La Femme Musketeer" ("Lady Musketeer – All for One", FR 2004) she was the scheming Lady Bolton. In 2006 she had a guest appearance in David Lynch's surreal "Inland Empire" (FR/PL/US). Kinski, whose filmography included about 70 titles by then, played her last feature film role for a longer period of time as a clergywoman in the homeless drama "Sugar" (US 2013). Nevertheless, Nastjassja Kinski did not disappear from the scene: In 2016, she took part in the TV dance show "Let's Dance" with her then life partner Christian Polanc. In September 2017, she appeared as a contestant in the game show "Wer weiß denn sowas?". Also in 2017, she received an honorary Leopard for lifetime achievement at the Locarno Film Festival.
As an actress, Kinski did not appear again until 2022, but in several roles: First in an episode lead role in the French-Belgian crime series "Police de Caractères", followed by a supporting role in the German TV comedy "Homeshopper's Paradise" and a lead role as a lonely hairdresser in Thomas Stuber's character and social study "Die stillen Trabanten" ("Dark Satellites"), based on the book of the same name by Clemens Meyer.
Nastjassja Kinski lives in Los Angeles. Her half-siblings Pola Kinski (b. 1952, from her father's first marriage) and Nikolai Kinski (b. 1976, from her father's third marriage) and her cousin Lara Naszinsky (b. 1967) are also actors.