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 His autobiography 'Ich brauche Liebe', one of the most vicious attacks on the film business ever written, has been withdrawn for legal reasons.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 actress Pola Kinski. Father of Nikolai Kinski. Klaus Kinski's autobiography was originally released under the title "All I Need Is Love", but was withdrawn in 1989 due to a contract dispute: an Italian publisher claimed Kinski had agreed to write an autobiography for them, and sued the publishers. It was reissued in 1997 under the title "Uncut", adding material that had been excluded from the first version of the book. 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: The Wrath of God, Woyzeck, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde. Grandchildren: Aljosha, Sonja and Kenia 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. Uncle of actress Lara Naszinsky. Son of Bruno Nakszynski, a Polish-German pharmacist, and his wife Susanne Lutze, daughter of a German pastor from Danzig. Only his son Nikolai Kinski attended his funeral in California, where his ashes were strewn in the Pacific Ocean (1991). Turned down the role of a German villain in Raiders of the Lost Ark, although he wanted to do a movie with Steven Spielberg movie, but thought "the script is as moronically shitty as so many other flicks of its ilk." His provocative TV appearance on Je später der Abend ... became legendary because he didn't answer a single question during an interview of and called the host 'Reinhard Münchenhagen' "Herr Münchhausen" (1977).