|
Kim Basinger
Scroll down for movie list.
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Leggy, full-lipped blonde whose sultry screen presence-the camera really loves her-was honed by years of experience as a top fashion model. Basinger left the cover-girl life for acting in the early 1980s, after testing the waters in the made-for-TV Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold in 1978. She made her film debut in 1981's Hard Country but wasn't really noticed until she became a "Bond girl" in Never Say Never Again (1983), and promoted the film with a nude layout in "Playboy." Routinely cast as a sex object, Basinger gamely stumbled through The Natural (1984) and Robert Altman's Fool for Love (1985) before landing the starring role in the 1986 pulp hit Nine Weeks Afterward, she branched out into comedy, starring in several regrettable flops including Nadine, Blind Date (both 1987) and My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988). She played reporter Vicki Vale in Batman (1989), the phenomenal success of which boosted her standing as a bankable star. She behaved accordingly, reportedly hampering (with costar and later husband Alec Baldwin) completion of The Marrying Man (1991).
Critics generally haven't been kind to Basinger, to say the least, but she occasionally surprises-and confounds-her detractors. She showed promise in a reasonably complex role as a seductive schemer in Final Analysis (1992). When all's said and done, though, she owes her success more to the raw, animal sexuality she so ably projects, rather than to whatever acting ability she's demonstrated to date. Early in 1993 she garnered headlines for a film she didn't make: The producers of the black comedy Boxing Helena won a multimillion-dollar judgment against her after she allegedly reneged on her agreement to star. (The verdict was later overturned.) Other recent credits include Cool World (1992, as the voice and model for sexy animated character Holli Wood), The Real McCoy (1993), Wayne's World 2 (also 1993, parodying her own sexy screen image as Honey Horne), The Getaway (1994, opposite Baldwin), and Ready to Wear/Prt--Porter (also 1994). |  |
