Georgia-born Kim Basinger studied dancing and singing from childhood, intending
to make her professional bow as a musical comedy performer. While still a high schooler,
Basinger left for New York to pursue a career as a model; her blonde hair and beautiful,
pliable features were equally suited to the demureness of Breck`s home-permanent
ads and the more revelatory requirements of Playboy magazine. After studying acting
at the Neighborhood Playhouse, she made her starring debut in the 1978 TV-movie
Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold. The reviews were kind but condescending, noting
that as an actress, Basinger was very pretty. Basinger countered her critics with
an excellent performance as prostitute Lorene Rogers in the 1979 TV miniseries From
Here to Eternity, which led to plum acting assignments in theatrical features. She
became best-known during the 1980s for her work in such films as the Bond flick
Never Say Never Again (1983), The Natural (1984), Batman (1989), and, perhaps most
infamously, in Adrian Lyne`s 9 1/2 Weeks (1986). Successfully dissipating the standard
"dumb blonde" onus often attached to models-turned-actresses of the decade, Basinger
was an active environmentalist offscreen, and in 1989 she endeared herself to the
Georgia chamber of commerce by purchasing a small village not far from her home
town of Athens and attempting to pump up the local economy. Much of the laudatory
press enjoyed by Basinger and her actor husband Alec Baldwin was scuttled during
the troubled filming of 1991`s The Marrying Man, wherein the couple allegedly comported
themselves in an unprofessional a manner. This storm subsided, but within a year
the actress made headlines again due to a costly lawsuit. Determining that Basinger`s
verbal agreement to appear in the film Boxing Helena was legal and binding, a judge
ordered the actress, who`d pulled out of the project, to pay $8,000,000 in damages
to the film`s producers. Recast with Sherilyn Fenn, Boxing Helena proved to be just
as disastrous as Basinger feared, and after she was forced to declare bankruptcy,
her appeal was accepted by the court. In 1997, following a few more years of career
difficulties, Basinger surprised observers with one of the year`s most triumphant
comebacks. For her role as a hooker with a heart in Curtis Hanson`s lavishly praised
L.A. Confidential, she won both the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress,
as well as renewed critical respect. Two years later, she combined her onscreen
career with her offscreen committment to environmental causes with her portrayal
of real-life wildlife preservationist Kuki Gallmann in Hugh Hudson`s I Dreamed of
Africa.