Age, Biography, and Wiki
Kim Basinger is an American model and actress born on December 8, 1953, making her 71 years old as of 2024. She is best recognized for her performances in films such as "Never Say Never Again," "The Natural," and "Batman." Basinger has lived a life marked by both professional success and personal challenges, including a high-profile marriage and divorce from Alec Baldwin.
Her biography is filled with notable roles and awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal in "L.A. Confidential" in 1997.
Occupation | Musicians |
---|---|
Date of Birth | 8 December 1953 |
Age | 71 Years |
Birth Place | Athens, Georgia, U.S. |
Horoscope | Sagittarius |
Country | Georgia |
Height, Weight & Measurements
- Height: 5 feet 7 inches (1.71 meters)
- Weight: Not publicly disclosed
- Measurements: Not publicly disclosed
Height | 5 feet 7 inches |
Weight | |
Body Measurements | |
Eye Color | |
Hair Color |
Dating & Relationship Status
As of 2024, Kim Basinger is in a relationship with Mitch Stone.
Divorced from makeup artist Ron Snyder and actor Alec Baldwin, Basinger cohabitates with her longtime hairdresser, Mitch Stone. She had a high-profile relationship between marriages with musician Prince, with whom she recorded an album, Hollywood Affair, and is the mother of social media influencer Ireland Baldwin from her marriage to Baldwin.
Her mother, Ann Lee (née Cordell; 1925–2017), was a model, actress and swimmer who appeared in several Esther Williams films. Her father, Donald Wade Basinger (1923–2016), was a big band musician and loan manager; as a U.S. Army soldier, he landed in Normandy on D-Day. The middle of five children, she has two older brothers, Skip (b. 1950) and Mick (b. 1951), and two younger sisters, Barbara (b. 1956) and Ashley (b. 1959). Basinger's ancestry includes English, German, and Ulster Scots. She was raised a Methodist. Basinger has described herself as extremely shy, which had a major effect on her during her childhood and young adulthood. She has said that her shyness was so extreme that she would faint if asked to speak in class.
Basinger studied ballet from about age three to her mid-teens. By her mid-teens, she grew in confidence and successfully auditioned for the school cheerleading team. At 17, she entered America's Junior Miss Scholarship Pageant, won at the city level and was crowned Athens Junior Miss. While she didn't win at the state level, her beauty was profiled in the national program. She had competed at the state level for the Breck Scholarship and was featured in an ad for Breck in a joint portrait with her mother.
In 1976, after four years as a cover girl, Basinger quit modeling and moved to Los Angeles to act. She made guest appearances on a few television shows such as McMillan & Wife and Charlie's Angels, turning down a regular role in the latter series that eventually went to Cheryl Ladd. 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. In 1979, she co-starred with Natalie Wood, William Devane and Steve Railsback in the miniseries remake of From Here to Eternity, reprising her role as prostitute Lorene Rogers in a 13-episode spinoff that aired in 1980. In 1981, Basinger made her feature debut in the critically well-received but little-seen rural drama Hard Country, which she followed with the Charlton Heston-directed outdoorsy adventure Mother Lode (1982).
In 1993, Basinger took on the roles of a woman recently released from prison in the crime film The Real McCoy, a woman named Honey Hornée in the comedy Wayne's World 2, and was in the music video for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' hit single Mary Jane's Last Dance. In 1994, she reunited professionally with Baldwin for the thriller The Getaway, in which she portrayed the wife of a former con, and with director Robert Altman for the comedy Prêt-à-Porter, playing a breathlessly dim-witted cable reporter. Amid financial issues, Basinger went into hiatus from the screen by the mid-1990s.
Curtis Hanson cast her again, this time as the alcoholic mother of an aspiring rapper, in 8 Mile (2002), opposite Eminem and Brittany Murphy. The film appeared on many top ten lists of the year, and in his review, Roger Ebert asserted: "There has been criticism of Kim Basinger, who is said to be too attractive and even glamorous to play [Eminem]'s mother, but [...] Her performance finds the right note somewhere between love and exasperation; it cannot be easy to live with this sullen malcontent, whose face lights up only when he sees his baby sister". 8 Mile was a commercial success, grossing $242.9 million worldwide.
Basinger starred as the wife of a children's book author, with Jeff Bridges and Jon Foster, in The Door in the Floor (2004), a drama with heavy sexual themes adapted from the novel A Widow for One Year by John Irving. The film found a limited audience in theaters, but in his review, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, felt that "Basinger's haunted beauty burns in the memory" and called it "her finest work".
Basinger then played a mother having extramarital affairs in director Guillermo Arriaga's feature film debut The Burning Plain (2008), a drama narrated in a hyperlink format, opposite Charlize Theron and Jennifer Lawrence. While the film found a limited release in theaters, The Telegraph, in its review, wrote: "Arriaga pulls together the strands of his narrative with great expertise [and] his job is made easier by great performances from three actresses: Theron and Basinger, who both look like racing certs for next year's awards season, and Jennifer Lawrence as Basinger's teenage daughter".
In 2008, Basinger produced and starred in the independent thriller While She Was Out, as a suburban housewife who is forced to fend for herself when she becomes stranded in a desolate forest with four murderous thugs. Despite a very limited release in theaters, L.A. Weekly described that film as a "surprisingly enjoyable female revenge tale" and called Basinger's performance "first-rate". Her next film, The Informers (2009), which was written by Bret Easton Ellis, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In it, Basinger starred as the chronically depressed wife of a jaded film executive (played by Billy Bob Thornton).
Basinger played the mother of a young man who made a promise to his deceased brother, with Zac Efron, in the supernatural drama Charlie St. Cloud (2010), based on the 2004 best-selling novel The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud by Ben Sherwood.
Basinger played the role of wife in two 2013 films — the independent drama Third Person, with Liam Neeson and Olivia Wilde, and the sports comedy Grudge Match, with Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone. Critic Odie Henderson, describing Basinger in his review for the latter film, remarked that she "looks stunning at 60 and provides the film's sole voice of reason". She subsequently took on the role of mother in the independent drama 4 Minute Mile (2014) as well as the part of a woman who, after a miscarriage, sets out on a dangerous quest to obtain a child in the likewise independent production The 11th Hour (also 2014), which was released for VOD. IndieWire felt that Basinger "does what she can with [The 11th Hour] material, but that's not much". In 2016, she had a brief role, as a crooked high-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice, in the crime comedy The Nice Guys, alongside Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.
In 1990, Basinger met her second husband, Alec Baldwin, when they played lovers in The Marrying Man. They married on August 19, 1993, and starred in the 1994 remake of The Getaway. They also played themselves in a 1998 episode of The Simpsons, in which Basinger corrected Homer Simpson on the pronunciation of her surname and polished her Oscar statuette. Basinger and Baldwin have a daughter, Ireland, born October 23, 1995. They separated at the end of 2000 and divorced on September 3, 2002. In his 2008 book, A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce, Baldwin chronicled the contentious seven-year custody battle with Basinger over their daughter following their separation, contending that she spent more than $1.5 million in her efforts to deny him parental access.
After the divorce from Baldwin, Basinger was reported to be romantically linked with 8 Mile (2002) co-star Eminem, which the rapper repeatedly denied. She would not have another public attachment until 2014, when she began dating Mitch Stone. Like Snyder and Peters before him, Stone is also Basinger's hairstylist. The couple wear matching gold bands and have since moved in together.
Basinger's parents were legally married from 1948 to 2016, though they separated in 1980 and had little or no contact for the last 36 years of her father's life. Contrary to erroneous reports, they never divorced.
Starting in the mid-1990s, Basinger was estranged from her mother, Ann, and all but one of her four siblings. Her father Don and youngest sister Ashley were the only family members invited to her second wedding in 1993, and the only family members she thanked in her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards in 1998. Basinger was still estranged from her mother as of 2002. However, they appeared to have reconciled by 2015, when Ann told RadarOnline in an exclusive interview that Kim would be coming home to Georgia for Christmas.
Parents | |
Husband | Ron Snyder (m. October 12, 1980-December 23, 1989) Alec Baldwin (m. August 19, 1993-September 3, 2002) |
Sibling | |
Children |
Net Worth and Salary
Kim Basinger's net worth is estimated to be around $20 million as of 2024. This figure reflects her earnings from a successful acting career, modeling, endorsements, and various financial decisions over the years.
Business Ventures
One of her most notable business ventures was the purchase of 1,751 acres in Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million in 1989. The plan was to transform the area into a tourist destination with movie studios and a film festival. However, due to financial challenges, she sold the property in 1995 for $4.3 million, taking a significant loss.
Basinger began her career as a model and switched to acting in 1976. She appeared in several television productions, including a remake of From Here to Eternity (1979), before making her feature debut in the rural drama Hard Country (1981). Basinger first gained widespread attention for her performance of Domino Petachi in the James Bond entry Never Say Never Again (1983). She went on to receive a Golden Globe nomination for her role in The Natural (1984), starred in the erotic drama 9½ Weeks (1986), and played Vicki Vale in Tim Burton's Batman (1989), which remains the highest-grossing film of her career. For her femme fatale portrayal in L.A. Confidential (1997), Basinger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Writer-director Robert Benton also cast her in the title role of a slightly pregnant woman in trouble for Nadine (1987). While most of the films Basinger starred in during this period were released to varying degrees of success, they helped to establish her as an actress. With over US$400 million in box office totals, the highest-grossing film of her career thus far is Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman, in which Basinger took on role of photojournalist Vicki Vale, opposite Michael Keaton. Basinger re-wrote the film's third act with producer Jon Peters with whom she was having a behind the scenes affair. The Hollywood Reporter, in its original review, remarked that "the uniqueness and very soul of the film [...] is achieved through the beautifully defined and probing performances of Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne and Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale".
Basinger played Elena Lincoln, the business partner and former lover of Christian Grey, in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades Darker (2017), the sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey. Dakota Johnson, her co-star, described her as "one of the great people to work with". Despite negative reviews, the film made US$381.4 million globally. Basinger reprised the role in the 2018 sequel, Fifty Shades Freed.
On October 12, 1980, she married makeup artist Ron Snyder-Britton, whom she met on the film Hard Country. Basinger developed agoraphobia that same year, following a panic attack in a health-food store, and was housebound for six months. Snyder quit his job during the marriage and changed his surname to Britton after Basinger requested he choose "something with a B" so she could keep the same initials when using her married name. The pair divorced just before Christmas 1989, after which Basinger paid him $9,000 monthly alimony for eight years. Britton wrote a memoir titled Longer Than Forever, published in 1998, about their time together and about her affair with Richard Gere, with whom she starred in No Mercy (1986) and Final Analysis (1992).
Social Network
While Kim Basinger is not exceptionally active on social media platforms, her presence is maintained through occasional updates and mentions in media outlets.
Her breakthrough role came as Domino Petachi, the Bond girl in Never Say Never Again (1983), where she starred opposite Sean Connery. In his review of the film, Gary Arnold of The Washington Post said Basinger "looks like a voluptuous sibling of Liv Ullmann and has a certain something." Worldwide, Never Say Never Again grossed US$160 million. As part of its promotion, Basinger did a famous nude pictorial for Playboy, which she has said led to good opportunities, such as her role as the romantic interest of a baseball team star in Barry Levinson's The Natural (1984), alongside Robert Redford, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
She made a comeback as the high-class hooker in Curtis Hanson's neo-noir L.A. Confidential (1997), alongside Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe. She initially turned down the film twice, feeling an insecurity at returning to the screen and enjoying motherhood. The Washington Post felt that Basinger "exudes a sort of chaste sultriness", in what Roger Ebert described as "one of the best films of the year". The role earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, and was also nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She holds the distinction of being the only actress who has both posed nude in Playboy and won an Academy Award. In a 2000 interview with Charlie Rose, Basinger said that L.A. Confidential and her next film, I Dreamed of Africa (2000), were the most pleasurable of her career.
Education
Kim Basinger attended the University of Georgia, where she studied drama. However, she eventually dropped out to pursue a career in modeling and acting.
In summary, Kim Basinger's story is one of resilience, marked by both professional successes and personal challenges, including financial setbacks. Despite these, she remains a celebrated figure in Hollywood.
Basinger was offered a modeling contract with the Ford Modeling Agency, but turned it down in favor of singing and acting, and enrolled at the University of Georgia. She soon reconsidered and went to New York to become a Ford model. Despite earning US$1,000 a day, Basinger never enjoyed modeling, saying: "It was very hard to go from one booking to another and always have to deal with the way I looked. I couldn't stand it. I felt myself choking." Basinger has said that even as a model, when others relished looking in the mirror before appearing, she abhorred it and would avoid mirrors out of insecurity. Not long after her Ford deal, Basinger appeared on the cover of magazines. She also appears on the cover of the debut album by the band Survivor. She appeared in hundreds of advertisements throughout the early 1970s, most notably as the Breck Shampoo girl. She alternated between modeling and attending acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, as well as performing in Greenwich Village clubs as a singer. Basinger is an alumna of the William Esper Studio for the performing arts in Manhattan, New York City.
Basinger next appeared in two crime thrillers—Cellular (2004) and The Sentinel (2006). In Cellular, opposite Chris Evans and Jason Statham, she played a wealthy high school biology teacher taken hostage in her home. Entertainment Weekly considered that "Basinger makes a vividly frightened yet resourceful woman in peril", and the film was a moderate commercial success. In The Sentinel, Basinger portrayed the First Lady of the United States, opposite Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland and Eva Longoria. Despite mixed reviews, the film made US$78.1 million globally. In 2006, Basinger also starred in the Lifetime film The Mermaid Chair, as a married woman who falls in love with a Benedictine monk and experiences a self-awakening.