Kim Basinger Biography

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.

Early life

Basinger was born in Athens, Georgia. Her father, Don Basinger, was a big band musician and loan manager who landed in Normandy during D-Day. Her mother, Ann, was a model, actress, and swimmer who appeared in Esther Williams films. She has two brothers, Mick and Skip, and two sisters, Ashley and Barbara.

When Basinger was sixteen years old, 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.

Career

Not long after penning the deal, Basinger was on the cover of numerous magazines. She appeared in hundreds of ads throughout the early ‘70s, 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 holds the distinction of being 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.

Personal life

Basinger married makeup artist Ron Snyder-Britton in 1980. They 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). She later had a relationship with Prince, for less than a year. She met her second husband, actor Alec Baldwin, when both played romantic lovers in the 1991 success , The Marrying Man. They married on August 19, 1993 and appeared in another success in Europe, 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. They have a daughter, Ireland Eliesse "Addie" Baldwin (born October 23, 1995). The couple separated in 2000 and divorced in February 2002. Since then, Basinger and Baldwin have been locked in a contentious public custody battle.

Basinger suffers from agoraphobia, which she blames on discomfort early in her Hollywood career from people "ogling" her when was required to appear in bikinis. She said she was in "misery because people were looking at her " and that she would go "home and play piano and scream at night to let out... frustrations."

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 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.

Basinger is also a vegetarian and PETA supporter.

Filmography
Year     Film     Role     Other notes
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     AURORA ISLAND ?
2007     Even Money     Carol Carver     
2008     While She Was Out     TBA     awaiting release
The Informers     Graham's Mother     post-production
2009     The Burning Plain     Gina     post-production

Kim Basinger Pictures ( 30 Pictures)

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