Kim Basinger | |||||||||||||||||||
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Basinger at the Academy Awards, March 1990 |
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Born | Kimila Ann Basinger December 8, 1953 Athens, Georgia |
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Occupation | Film actress | ||||||||||||||||||
Spouse(s) | Ron Snyder (1980-1988) Alec Baldwin (1993-2002) |
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Kimila Ann "Kim" Basinger (pronounced /ˈbeɪsɪŋɚ/ bay-sing-er, often mispronounced /ˈbæsɪndʒɚ/bass-in-jer; born December 8, 1953) is an Academy Award-winning American film actress and former fashion model.
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Basinger was born in Athens, Georgia in 1953. Her father, Don Basinger, was a big band musician and loan manager[1] who landed in Normandy on D-Day.[2] Her mother, Ann, was a model, actress, and swimmer who appeared in Esther Williams films. The third of five children, she has two brothers, Mick and Skip, and two sisters, Ashley and Barbara. Basinger has German, Swedish and Cherokee ancestry[3] and was raised Methodist.[4]
When Basinger was sixteen, she started her modeling career by winning the Athens Junior Miss contest. She followed that by winning the title “Junior Miss Georgia”. Basinger then competed in the national Junior Miss pageant. It was there that Basinger was offered a modeling contract with Ford Modeling Agency. Initially turning down the offer in favor of singing and acting, Basinger reconsidered and went to New York to become a Ford model.
Not long after penning the deal, Basinger was on the cover of numerous magazines. She appeared in hundreds of ads throughout the early 1970s, most notably appearing as the Breck shampoo girl. She achieved a top model status by age 20, earning a salary of $1,000 a day. In the meantime, she alternated between modeling work and attending acting classes at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse as well as performing in various Greenwich Village clubs.
In 1976, after a five-year stint as a cover girl, Basinger decided to put her modeling career on hold and move to Los Angeles to begin a career in acting. After appearing in small parts on a few TV shows such as McMillan & Wife and Charlie's Angels, her first starring role was a made-for-TV movie, Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold (1978) in which she played a small town girl who goes to Hollywood to become an actress and winds up becoming a famous centerfold for a men's magazine. She was a Bond girl in Never Say Never Again (1983), where she starred opposite Sean Connery. She did a famous pictorial for Playboy in 1983, which Basinger has said led to good opportunities, such as Barry Levinson's The Natural (1984), co-starring Robert Redford, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Academy Award winning writer-director Robert Benton cast her in the title role for the film Nadine (1987). Other directors repeated her in their films, such as Blake Edwards for The Man Who Loved Women (1983) and Blind Date (1987)) and Robert Altman for Fool for Love (1985) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994). Her most prominent appearances include 9½ Weeks (1986), Batman (1989) and Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997), for which she received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the Golden Globe and Screen Actor's Guild Award. Hanson would cast her once more as Eminem's mother in the hit film 8 Mile (2002). She is the only actress who has both posed nude in Playboy and won an Academy Award.
In 1992 Basinger was the guest vocalist on a re-recorded version of Was (Not Was)'s "Shake Your Head," which also featured Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, and reached the UK Top 5. This makes her also one of a few Academy Award winners for acting roles to have had a hit record, particularly in more recent years.
In the video for Tom Petty's 1993 song "Mary Jane's Last Dance", Basinger played the role of a deceased woman Petty brings home from the morgue for a dinner date, clothing her in a wedding dress. Later, Petty is shown carrying her to a rocky shore and throwing her into the sea. In a macabre ending, she is seen floating in the water with her eyes open.
She was, at an early stage, considered for the role of Donna in film adaptation of the stage musical Mamma Mia!, but lost to Meryl Streep.
In 1980 Basinger married makeup artist Ron Snyder-Britton, whom she had met on the film Hard Country, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1988. He would later write a memoir titled Longer than Forever, published in 1998, about their time together and about her rumored affair with actor Richard Gere, with whom she starred in No Mercy (1986) and Final Analysis (1992).[5]
In 1990 she met her second husband, actor Alec Baldwin, when they played lovers in the film The Marrying Man. They married on August 19, 1993 and appeared in the remake of The Getaway (1994). They also played themselves in an 1998 episode of The Simpsons (which also includes Ron Howard), where Basinger corrects Homer Simpson on the pronunciation of her last name and also polishes her Oscar statuette.
Basinger and Baldwin had a daughter, Ireland Eliesse "Addie" Baldwin (born October 23, 1995). They separated at the end of 2000 and divorced in February 2002. Since then, the couple have been locked in a contentious public custody battle. Alec Baldwin's book A Promise To Ourselves[6] chronicles the lengths Basinger has gone to deny Baldwin access to their daughter since their separation. They are not on good terms.
Basinger suffers from agoraphobia, which she blames on discomfort early in her Hollywood career from people "ogling" her when she was required to appear in bikinis. She said she was in "misery" when strangers looked at her and that she would go "home and play piano and scream at night to let out...frustrations."[7]
Some of her family members recommended that Basinger buy the small town of Braselton, Georgia in 1989 for $20 million, with the hopes of establishing the town as a tourist attraction with movie studios and a film festival, but she met financial difficulties and sold it in 1993. The town is now owned by developer Wayne Mason. In a 1998 interview with Barbara Walters, Basinger admitted that "nothing good came out of it," because a rift resulted within her family. Her financial difficulties were exacerbated when she pulled out of the controversial film Boxing Helena, resulting in the studio suing and winning an $8-million judgment against her at after a trial. Basinger filed for bankruptcy[8] and also appealed the jury's decision to a higher court, which sided with her. Eventually, she and the studio settled for a lesser amount.[9]
Year | Film | Role | Other notes |
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1981 | Hard Country | Jodie | |
1981 | Killjoy | Laury Medford | aka Who Murdered Joy Morgan? |
1982 | Mother Lode | Andrea Spalding | |
1983 | Never Say Never Again | Domino Petachi | |
The Man Who Loved Women | Louise Carr | ||
1984 | The Natural | Memo Paris | Nominated - Golden Globe |
1985 | Fool for Love | May | |
1986 | 9½ Weeks | Elizabeth | |
No Mercy | Michel Duval | ||
1987 | Blind Date | Nadia Gates | |
Nadine | Nadine Hightower | ||
1988 | My Stepmother Is an Alien | Celeste Martin | |
1989 | Batman | Vicki Vale | |
1991 | The Marrying Man | Vicki Anderson | |
1992 | Final Analysis | Heather Adams | |
Cool World | Holli Would | ||
The Real McCoy | Karen McCoy | ||
1993 | Wayne's World 2 | Honey Horneé | |
Mary Jane's Last Dance | music video for Tom Petty | ||
1994 | A Century of Cinema | Herself | documentary |
The Getaway | Carol McCoy | ||
Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter) | Kitty Potter | ||
1997 | L.A. Confidential | Lynn Bracken | Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; Nominated - BAFTA Award; Golden Globe |
2000 | I Dreamed of Africa | Kuki Gallmann | |
Bless the Child | Maggie O'Connor | ||
2002 | 8 Mile | Stephanie Smith | |
People I Know | Victoria Gray | ||
2004 | The Door in the Floor | Marion Cole | |
Elvis Has Left the Building | Harmony Jones | ||
Cellular | Jessica Martin | ||
2006 | The Sentinel | 1st Lady Sarah Ballentine | |
The Mermaid Chair | Jessie Sullivan | ||
2007 | Even Money | Carol Carver | |
2008 | While She Was Out | Lead Role | awaiting release |
The Informers | Graham's Mother | awaiting release | |
The Burning Plain | Gina | awaiting release |
Awards and achievements | ||
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Preceded by Juliette Binoche for The English Patient |
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress 1997 for L.A. Confidential |
Succeeded by Judi Dench for Shakespeare in Love |
Preceded by Lauren Bacall for The Mirror Has Two Faces |
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture 1997 for L.A. Confidential |
Succeeded by Lynn Redgrave for Gods and Monsters |
Preceded by Lauren Bacall for The Mirror Has Two Faces |
Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture 1997 for L.A. Confidential |
Succeeded by Kathy Bates for Primary Colors |
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Persondata | |
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NAME | Basinger, Kim |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Basinger, Kimila Ann |
SHORT DESCRIPTION | Actor |
DATE OF BIRTH | December 8, 1953 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Athens, Georgia |
DATE OF DEATH | |
PLACE OF DEATH |