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Klaus Kinski (October 18, 1926 - November 23, 1991) was a celebrated and controversial German actor, who died in California.
Kinski was born Nikolaus Karl Günther Nakszynski to an ethnic Polish father, the pharmacist Bruno Nakszynski, and a Danzig (Gdansk) pastor's daughter named Susanne Lutze, in Zoppot/Free City of Danzig (now Sopot,Poland). 1930/31 the family moved to Berlin and Klaus attended the Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in Schöneberg.
During the war he served in the German Army in the Netherlands.
Kinski supposedly spent his short term in the military flagging down American planes and begging them to shoot him. Kinski went AWOL and surrendered himself to the British forces. He spent most of his time during the war as a POW under British control. When he was in a POW camp he realized his acting talent as he performed for his fellow prisoners. After the war he returned to West Germany. Because his place of birth was conquered by Soviet communists and had become Poland, he never got to go back to either Westprussia, Zoppot or Danzig. He began acting and changed his name to Klaus Kinski. He started on stage in Germany, and soon moved, pragmatically, to film, where the money was better. He acted in an enormous number of films, most of them considered "junk" (Schrott) by Kinski himself.
His film roles include A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), The Counterfeit Traitor (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), For a Few Dollars More (1966), Grand Slam (movie) (1968). His international reputation was built on his collaborations with director Werner Herzog in such films as Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), Woyzeck (1978), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).
In real life, Kinski often appeared as a drunken, sex-crazed maniac, chronicling his exploits in an autobiography that rivals Wilt Chamberlain's in terms of sexuality. Due to him playing a lot of crazy, murderous villains in his films (for example in the Edgar Wallace series) and his determined, often obsessive behavior, he often was referred to as a crazy genius. Herzog's retrospective on his work with Kinski was released in the United States as My Best Fiend.
He was married four times and had three children, two daughters (Nastassja Kinski and Nola Kinski, both being actresses) and a son (Nikolai Kinski).
He died of a heart attack in Lagunitas, California, United States.
Recently he was honoured by his city of birth, Sopot. However it proved to by highly controversial.