Actor / Director Profile

Kim Basinger was born December 8, 1953, in Athens, Georgia, the third of five children. Both her parents had been in entertainment, her dad had played big-band jazz, and her mother had performed water ballet in several Esther Williams movies. Kim was introspective, from her father's side. As a schoolgirl, she was very shy. To help her overcome this, her parents had Kim study ballet from an early age. By the time she reached sweet sixteen, the once-shy Kim entered the Athens Junior Miss contest. From there, she went on to win the Junior Miss Georgia title and traveled to New York to compete in the national Junior Miss pageant. It was in 1969 when she did her first modeling job, for a shampoo ad. Kim, who had blossomed to a 5' 7" beauty, was offered a contract on the spot with the Ford Modeling Agency. At the age of 20, Kim was a top model, commanding $1,000 a day. Throughout the early 1970s, she appeared on dozens of magazine covers and in hundreds of ads, most notably as the Breck girl. Kim took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, performed in various Greenwich Village clubs, and sang under the stage name Chelsea.In 1976, Kim moved to Los Angeles, ready to conquer Hollywood. Kim broke into television doing episodes of such hit series as "Charlie's Angels" (1976). In 1980, she married Ron Snyder-Britton, a makeup artist who whom she had met in 1979 on the set of her film Hard Country (1981). She gained some attention for playing a prostitute in the remake of "From Here to Eternity" (1979), but it was her role as Domino Petachi in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983) (opposite Sean Connery) that brought her fame and made her an in-demand actress. She was next paired with Burt Reynolds in The Man Who Loved Women (1983) and Robert Redford in The Natural (1984) (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination), and gave another great performance in Fool for Love (1985). Kim was Hollywood royalty for the rest of the eighties, with starring roles in the high-profile films Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986), No Mercy (1986), Blind Date (1987), Nadine (1987), My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988), and Batman (1989).With perhaps too much disposable income, Kim headed up an investment group that purchased the entire town of Braselton, in her native Georgia, for $20 million (she would later have to sell it). In 1989, she divorced Ron Snyder and began a relationship with Alec Baldwin the following year. They married in 1993 and had a daughter, Ireland Eliesse, two years later. Kim took some time off to stay at home with her child. Kim, who loves animals and is a strict vegetarian, devoted energy to animal rights issues and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), even posing for some ads. She and Baldwin filed for divorce in 2000.Kim gave an Oscar-winning performance in the film noir L.A. Confidential (1997). Her salary for I Dreamed of Africa (2000) was $5,000,000, putting her firmly back in the category of big-name movie star. She later played Eminem's mom in the hit film 8 Mile (2002). More recently, Kim has starred in the thrillers Cellular (2004) and The Sentinel (2006), and there are still many great things ahead, in the career of cover girl turned Oscar-winning actress Kim Basinger.