Kim Basinger at 70: A look back at her incredible life

Wow! Time flies. Kim Basinger celebrated her seventh decade of life in Dec. 2023... not that she looks it. But to celebrate her amazing career, here are some pics and fun facts that might just blow your mind!

Basinger was born in Athens, Georgia. Her mom was a model, actress and swimmer. Her dad was a musician and soldier who landed in Normandy on D-Day.

Image: kim.basinger/Instagram

Follow Showbizz Daily to stay informed and enjoy more content!

The girl who would go on to become a stunning actress was born Kimila Ann Basinger on Dec. 8, 1953.

Kim is the middle of five children, with two older brothers and two younger sisters. Starting from the mid-1990s, she was estranged from her mom and all but one sibling. Her dad and her sister Ashley were the only family members invited to her wedding and were thanked in her Academy Award speech. After 2015, some of them appeared to have reconciled.

As a young adult, she signed a modeling contract with the Ford Modelling Agency. Despite earning a ton of money, she said she hated always having to deal with the way she looked. She told Charlie Rose she was so insecure she would avoid looking in mirrors.

Despite what she thought, her modeling career was a huge success. She was on the cover of great magazines like Vogue and appeared in hundreds of advertisements. She was most known as the “Breck Shampoo Girl," and here she appears for the brand alongside her mom.

Image: Ralph William Williams & John H. Breck, Inc, 1972, via Wikimedia

On ‘Inside the Actor’s Studio,’ Kim said she was extremely shy growing up and would even faint if called upon in the classroom. Her parents put her in dance to help build her confidence, and by age 17 she was winning local beauty contests.

In 1976, after five years of modeling, she abandoned New York and the fashion world to become an actress in LA. She started finding success with guest roles on shows like ‘Charlie’s Angels.’

Image: 'Charlie's Angels,' 1976, ABC

The release of her magazine shoot coincided with her appearance as bond girl Dominetta Vitali, known simply as Domino, in ‘Never Say Never Again.’ That role and the photo shoot helped propel her to become one of the biggest s e x symbols of the era.

Although she quit modeling, she did pose for P l a y boy in 1981. However, the shoot wasn’t released until 1983. In the end, Kim Basinger holds the distinction of being the only actress who has both posed without clothes for the famous magazine ánd won an Academy Award.

Image: P l a y boy, Feb. 1983

Anxiety was always present in her life, but in 1980, the same year of her first marriage, she couldn’t leave the house for six months after a panic attack in a health food store. On ‘Red Table Talk,’ she explained that “everything used to make me nervous, like the glass to open the door.”

In 1986, she appeared in the sensual drama '9.5 Weeks,' which touched on control and abuse. The director aimed to create a real atmosphere of fear and tension on the set, trying to make Kim scared of her co-star Mickey Rourke. In fact, Rourke went off the script and slapped Kim. It was a deliberate part of the director’s strategy to make her “react not act.”

After her first divorce, she had a romantic relationship with the singer Prince. She appeared on the album he made for 'Batman,' and he produced her unreleased 1989 album ‘Hollywood Affair.’ As she is a singer too, her voice was heard in the musical ‘The Marrying Man.’

Although she was sick of being cast as the love interest by this point, in 1989, she starred as Batman’s love interest in Tim Burton’s ‘Batman.’ That film remains the highest-grossing project of her career.

Baldwin was her co-star in ‘The Marrying Man’, and the two had an incredibly public marriage from 1993 to 2002. They had one child. In his autobiography, Baldwin detailed the messy seven-year custody battle, alleging Basinger spent more than $1.5 million to deny him parental access.

Encouraged by family members, the actress bought most of the privately owned land in a small town in Georgia to establish it as a tourist attraction and build movie studios. But, it was all for nothing. She told Barbara Walters that “nothing good came out of it,” because of a rift with her family.

Kim was sued when she pulled out of the controversial 1993 film ‘Boxing Helena’ and the studio won an $8.9 million judgment against her. She filed for bankruptcy and appealed the decision, with the studio settling for $3.8 million instead.

After a series of lukewarm films, Kim made a big-time comeback as the high-class escort in the neo-noir picture ‘L.A. Confidential' (1997). She had initially turned the part down twice, as she was enjoying motherhood and feeling insecure. But in the end, it got her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Kim is a vegetarian and an animal rights activist, having posed for anti-fur advertisements by PETA, advocating for disabled farm animals, and speaking up about the inhuman dog meat trade in parts of Asia.

Image: kim.basinger/Instagram

In a wink to the intimate scenes from ‘9 ½ Weeks,’ Basinger appeared in two ‘Fifty Shades’ movies as the woman who introduced Grey to the B D / S M lifestyle. Those were her last two films (in 2017 and 2018), except for her work as a voice actor in ‘Back Home Again.’

While she didn’t remarry after the Baldwin debacle, she has been in a long-term relationship with hairstylist Mitch Stone since 2014. However, the couple is rarely seen in public and Basinger is fiercely protective of her personal life.

Ireland Baldwin is a model, actress, and something of an “it girl.” The two are very close, and Kim recently attended Ireland’s $tr ip per-themed baby shower after welcoming her first grandchild into the world.

In Jan. 2022, Kim collaborated with Peter Bogdanovich to create ‘LIT Project 2: Flux,’ which was the first short film of its kind to be made available on the Ethereum blockchain as a non-fungible token.

Follow Showbizz Daily to stay informed and enjoy more content!