Kinski grew up in Berlin, was drafted into the German army and spent much of World War II as a British POW. He began acting on the stage, quickly gaining a reputation for his ferocious talent and equally ferocious temper. He started acting in films shortly afterwards, showing complete lack of discrimination as to their quality (a complete filmography is almost impossible to establish), but turning out memorable work for director Werner Herzog a similarly driven and obsessive character. Herzog and Kinski pushed each other to extremes over a fifteen-year working relationship, but finally split after irreconcilable differences when filming 'Cobra Verde'. Kinski subsequently directed and starred in 'Paganini', his only film as director. His autobiography 'Ich brauche Liebe', one of the most vicious attacks on the film business ever written, has been withdrawn for legal reasons.


Father, with Ruth Tocki, of Nastassja Kinski. Father of Nikolai Kinski. For a brief time he lived in an apartment in Munich which he shared with several other people. One of the children living there was thirteen-year-old Werner Herzog. They later collaborated in five movies: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972), Woyzeck (1979), Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1987). His countenance and screen persona gave his film career a boost in the 1960s when he was cast in a number of German productions based upon the thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Son of Bruno Nakszynski, a Polish-German pharmacist, and his wife Susanne Lutze, daughter of a German pastor from Danzig. Turned down the role of a German villain in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), although he wanted to do a movie with Steven Spielberg, but thought "the script is as moronically shitty as so many other flicks of its ilk.". He was recently honored by his city of birth, Sopot. His father was a struggling opera singer who abandoned Kinski and his family when Kinski was still a child. Was announced to play Dr. Hans Fallanda in Lifeforce (1985), but dropped out.