Kim Basinger turns 70: from erotic myth to living away from the spotlight

Kim Basinger's name will always be inevitably linked to a striptease, the one she performed in Nine and a Half Weeks for her co-star, Mickey Rourke, to the rhythm of Joe Cocker's broken voice in You Can Leave Your Hat On.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
07 December 2023 Thursday 09:24
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Kim Basinger turns 70: from erotic myth to living away from the spotlight

Kim Basinger's name will always be inevitably linked to a striptease, the one she performed in Nine and a Half Weeks for her co-star, Mickey Rourke, to the rhythm of Joe Cocker's broken voice in You Can Leave Your Hat On. It was 1986 and the actress, who had already become a bond girl three years earlier alongside Sean Connery, ascended to an erotic myth. She was 33 years old and had a promising career ahead of her that went awry along the way. Today Kim Basinger blows out 70 candles away from the Hollywood spotlight.

Born Kimila Ann Basinger in Athens, (Georgia, USA) in a large family with four siblings, her beauty opened doors for her as a model, but what she liked was singing and acting. In 1983 she starred alongside Sean Connery in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again, but real fame came with Adrian Lyne's toxic love story.

Then came Blind Date, Batman, The Getaway and other hits that culminated with her portrayal of a prostitute in L.A. Confidential (1997) which won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She has participated in more than forty films; the last, in 2018, Fifty Shades Freed.

But it's been years since Kim Basinger not only hasn't appeared on screen, but she hasn't graced red carpets or parties. According to what they say, the star did not know how to manage the fortune that she achieved with her career. Perhaps her greatest eccentricity was spending $20 million in 1989 to buy a 710-hectare town called Braselton to create a Hollywood theme park.

His mental health problems, such as agoraphobia and anxiety attacks, have also contributed to his preferring to live in privacy. She does it with her latest love, the hairdresser Mitch Stone, with whom she has lived since 2014. The couple was seen a few months ago at the party that her only daughter, Ireland – born from her marriage to Alec Baldwin – gave at the final stretch of her pregnancy. Kim is already the grandmother of a girl named Holland.

Married and divorced twice, the first time with the makeup artist Ron Snyder (from 1980 to 1989) and the second with Alec Baldwin (from 1993 to 2002), the actress also had notable romances such as the one she had with Richard Gere and the singer Prince.

Currently she is a great activist in the defense of animals, a facet that completely monopolizes her activity. She defines herself on her Instagram like this: “Actress who hopes that one day all of humanity will treat animals with the respect they deserve.”