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MOVIES? THEY WERE NEVER PART OF HER PLANS. BUT HER GRANDFATHER WAS THE ACTOR KLAUS KINSKI. HER MOTHER'S NAME IS NASTASSJA. BON SENT IDA PYK TO WEST HOLLYWOOD TO TALK HER FRIEND SONJA KINSKI ABOUT HER DEBUT FILM ALL GOD'S CHILDREN CAN DANCE.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY J.C. DHIEN STYLING BY LIZ BOTES
"I grew up among people who had differing expectations of me. I think it forced me to unconsciously take on roles and be someone else; maybe that's why it all seems so natural"
- Ida! she shouts, turning the key in the lock to open the door of her West Hollywood apartment.
Sonja Kinski is just short of six feet tall. She's carelessly, offhandedly pretty. With her face bare, she moves around the apartment in unlaced flats, a pair of black shorts and an oversized tee-shirt. The vast dark volume of her hair hangs down her back like a curtain.
But don't be fooled by her unpretentious style, because it looks like it's going to be Sonja Kinski's year this year. She makes her acting debut in Swedish director Robert Logevall's American production All God's Children Can Dance, based on a short story by Haruki Murakami and produced by Anonymous Content, the company behind Babel and Being John Malkovivich. She's already a successful model, and has been since her teen years. And then, of her mother actress Nastassja Kinski. But she never dreamed of the limelight.
I never wanted to become an actress, she says once we settle down on some pillows on the floor of her cigarette-perfumed apartment. When I was little, I dreamed of becoming an artist. Acting didn't interest me at all. Almost the opposite. My mother was never around when I was growing up. It forced me to become independent and strong, but that world has a big downside, too.
The downside rapidly comes into focus for anyone who does a little digging into Sonja Kinski's background - or anyway, the media version of it. Her grandfather, Klaus Kinski, was German actor who made the tempestuous Marlon Brando seem gentle as a lamb by comparison. During one stage appearance, he threw a candelabrum full of lit candles at the audience. While Aquirre - The Wrath of God was being filmed, he shot an extra in the hand.
Klaus Kinski's daughter, Sonja's mother Nastassja, started working as a model in Germany when she was eleven. A year later, she appeared naked on the silver screen for the first time in Wim Wenders' film The Wrong Move. At 16, she began a relationship with director Roman Polanski, 28 years her senior, who brought her to the United States and the famous Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Her big break came in the Polanski film Tess in 1979, and roles in Francis Ford Coppola's Cat People and Wim Wenders' Paris Texas cemented her reputation as an indescribably beautiful character actress and one of the biggest sex symbols of the eighties. But Nastassja Kinski is probably best known for a photo taken of her by Richard Avedon in which she lies in the floor, barely of legal age and completely naked except for a huge boa constrictor wrapped around her body. Almost 20 years later, the French magazine Photo published a new version of the Avedon portrait with the naked, barely legal Sonja Kinski in her mother's role.
I was a real searcher as a teenager, say Sonja, asked about her early years as a model. I didn't know what I was getting into; I guess I really just wanted my friends to think I was cool.
I will never forget the first time I met Sonja Kinski. It was a little over two years ago. I came down to Los Angeles to visit my American cousin Celesta, who had been a model in New York but ended up in L.A thanks to a romance with Red Hot Chili Peppers' frontman Anthony Kiedis. At the time, Celesta was sharing a little apartment with Sonja - one room and a bed. I don't know how the met, but they did everything together. They even shared the bed. But it wasn't Sonja I met the first; it was her brother, Ali. We dated while I was in Los Angeles, and it was Ali who took me to the Viper room, the black-fronted Sunset Boulevard club where River Phoenix took an overdose and staggered out into the street to die in 1993. The lobby of the Viper Room is red velvet and gold. The thick, secretive doors didn't let out a sound. When they opened, first I saw Celesta, then a whole crowd of people bent over an enormous head of hair. The hair was Sonja Kinski's.
At that point, I didn't know who her mother was, but when I saw her sitting there in the Viper Room, it was obvious that she was somebody you should know. It was something about her absolute-confidence as she inserted herself into the admiring surroundings that distinguished her from the rest of the crowd. She sat there as brilliant as a queen in her court, knowing she was the center of attention.
Even then, two years ago - having modeled since she was 13 (now she's 21) and been under contract to Tommy Hilfiger since 2002 - Sonja Kinski was already the girl everybody wanted to sit next to in the Viper Room. Today, as she makes her screen debut in Robert Logevall's All God's Children Can Dance, she still has yet to take a single acting lesson or make the audition rounds.
- Through Celesta I got in touch with Robert, who has been a good friend of Anthony Kiedis for a long time. He had this manuscript and wondered if I wanted to do a screen test. I read the script and figured I might as well give it a try.
- Sonja took the screen test - and got the part. Personally, she regards acting as an art form. Some people need to go to theater school to find their voice; others need to go to art school and copy and experiment with styles to find an idiom of their own. For yet other, it many work just as well to experiment on their own.
- I grew up among people who had differing expectations of me, says Sonja, placing a cigarette to her lips, squinting and taking a deep drag. I think it forced me to unconsciously take on roles and be someone else; maybe that's why it all seems so natural.
The script of All God's Children Can Dance is based on a short story from Haruki Murakami's 2000 collection After the Quake. Murakami was born and raised in Japan, but is much influenced by western literature and music. Several of his most commercially successful books borrow their titles from pop songs: Dance, Dance, Dance from the Beach Boys, Norwegian Wood from the Beatles.
Murakami has been hailed by critics for his darling, often provocative way of dealing with the emotional and sexual taboos of Asian culture. All God's Children Can Dance is no exception. In Los Angeles' Koreatown, we follow Kengo, a fatherless man in his twenties whose mother claims he is the son of God. Sonja plays Kengo's girlfriend Sandra, a girl perfused with sweet unease, love and sexuality. She loves Kengo and does doubt for a second that she wants to share her life with him. But Kengo's passionate, sometimes almost erotic relationship with his mother and his desperate quest for the father who, despite his adult years, he still believes is God, forces Sandra to put her foot down. Kengo has to get to grips with his problems and come down to earth. He must learn to choose: Sandra or the past. Sonja describes shooting the film.
When I was in character I was living in a separate world. I thought about it all the time, trying to locate aspects of the character in myself so I could portray her as well as possible. I kept a pen and a notebook with me constantly so I could write down thoughts and ideas. It was so inspiring - I felt like I had a purpose. It was life-changing.
"When I was younger I painted and wrote. I had all kinds of dreams. But when I started modeling, all that fell away. I lost my way, started drinking and going out every night"
Sonja's life before her screen debut was, she admits, "fairly glamorous". Immediately after her career took off with Tess, Nastassja Kinski moved back to Europe, where she married producer Ibrahim Moussa (best known for Fellini's Intervista) and had Sonja and Ali. After divorcing Moussa, she was married again in 1991 to Quincy Jones, the megaproducer behind, among other things, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall Thriller. For almost seven years, Sonja lived with Quincy Jones and Nastassja Kinski in Beverly Hills - a combination that guaranteed paparazzi in the bushes every day.
Today Sonja lives in nice neighborhood near Los Angeles' Sunset Plaza. Her building is big and white and faced with with marble, its lawn smelling freshly cut and redolent of well groomed luxury. But Sonja's apartment fells neither carefully designed nor particularly expensive. In one corner, a gray-brown sofa presses up against a crowded bookshelf. Pads of paper and pens are strewn in piles atop an old dresser, and drawings and photos hang on the walls. The lighting is dim and there's a smell of smoke. Sonja smokes constantly. She sits beside me with a cigarette jammed in the cleft between her index and middle fingers, avidly gesticulating as she relates the events of the past few years.
- When I was younger I painted and wrote. I had all kinds of dreams. But when I started modeling, all that fell away. I lost my way, started drinking and going out every night. I had lost the sense of where I was. It wasn't me any more.
Now Sonja feels she has found her way back. Everything that happens in life has a meaning, she says, and she fells she has learned from her mistakes. During a particularly desperate period, she took up writing again and realized how much she had missed having a creative outlet. Initially her words were angry and frustrated, but gradually, they calmed and grew more philosophical. Sonja began to paint again and discovered one of biggest current interests - photography.
There's so much I want to do, she says, expelling a veil of smoke that swirls round her face, but the most important thing is to find things I believed in. That was why I realized I love theater. It felt right. It was, like, me. I believed the art of playing a role really well is not to play at all. That's what happened in All God's Children Can Dance.
Sonja speaks passionately, non-stop,then cuts herself off in mid-sentence, stands up and walks over to the dresser. With a quick movement, she puts her hair up in a sloppy bun with its locks dangling down over her back. I am struck by how fragile and young her neck looks.
- If you like, she says, turning and brushing the thick locks of hair back behind her ears, I can show you what I'm writing. In a secret book with floral page borders, Sonja jots down her most intimate thoughts. These are the writing of a girl trying to understand life. A girl with dreams. I feel overwhelmed, honored and excited. An atmosphere of openness and complicity settles over us as Sonja pulls out the books she likes, the important photos. She talks about movies, directors, actors (favorites include Cate Blanchett, Angelina Jolie and Leonard DiCaprio, a latter a close family friend). In the middle of it all she stops, grab my arm and, hastily yet confidingly, looks me in the eyes.
- Ida, we have to call Jason so he can come over. You have to meet him! Can you wait or should I call now?
- Jason Lew plays Sonja's counter part Kengo in All God's Children Can Dance. He's also her boyfriend.
- I've never been this close a man before, she says, once, she makes the call and he promises to come soon - preferably now! - because he has to meet Ida.
- We've been together for seven months and we've just moved in together. It's a big challenge but a very positive one.
- As Sonja says these words she lowers her eyes and looks slightly embarrassed. Sonja and Jason met because of the movie, but didn't become a couple until shooting was finished and they had gotten to know each other. Beauty is no guarantee of happiness, says Sonja, even if jealousy makes us want to believe it is. Her previous relationships have tended to be brief, troubled and often come to chaotic ends. A couple years ago, rumors were flying about a romance with actor Orlando Bloom. but dating celebrities is not necessarily Sonja's thing. Jason comes from New York, where he studied acting and directing, but just like Sonja he is making his film debut in All God's Children Can Dance.
- When Jason arrives, we go up to Sonja's room upstairs in the apartment and Jason sit on their big, soft bed. Sonja and Jason sit close together. Jason has curly black hair and wide, angular, somewhat Asian features. He looks at Sonja with love in his eyes. It strikes me that, with Jason, the proud and heartstoppingly beautiful Sonja looks delicate and small. She touches him constantly and speaks quietly, urgently. Runs a hand down his sleeve. Kisses him. Her smile is youthful and happy.
Even then, two years ago, Sonja Kinski was already the girl everybody wanted to sit next to in the Viper Room
- Sitting here in their world, everything feels carefree and comfortable. Sonja starts pulling tapes and DVDs out of a box. Klaus Kinski's most unforgettable roles were in Werner Herzog films like Nosferatu (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). In the documentary My Best Friend (1999), Herzog talks about the stormy relationship that led him to plan to murder Kinski. Elsewhere, at the same time, Kinski was plotting to kill his best fiend, Herzog. Sonja has the complete Kinski/Herzog collection. A couple years ago, she visited Werner Herzog to talk about the grandfather she had never met.
- My grandfather was a fascinating actor, she says. I went to Paris to meet Herzog after watching the contents of this box. On a professional level, my grandfather was a remarkable man.
- But god! You have to talk to Robert! Jason suddenly exclaims, running to get his telephone.
"Hi Robert, it's Kengo," I hear him saying to the phone. Robert Logevall is from Sweden but has been making advertising films in Los Angeles for years. All God's Children Can Dance is his first feature film. The three grew close while the were shooting, says Sonja. When I take the phone, Robert tells me Sonja and Jason were terrific (of course), and that he's watching the film as we speak; they are working on the final cut. After I hang up, we decide to round out the evening with a tour of the Kinski/Herzog box. We start with Nosferatu, in which Klaus Kinski plays a blood thirsty Dracula who sinks his teeth into a young real state agent. Sonja has seen the film many times before, which becomes obvious when we press play and she leaps up onto a pillow at one corner of the bed to deliver a half-standing commentary in a clear, piercing voice.
- Here he comes now - it's my grandfather in disguise. Look at his eyes! I think he's barely even acting - he is Dracula!
Sonja shakes with loud, happy laughter. When something is funny, she's like a little girl, laughing with her whole body. She fast-forwards past the slow parts to the scenes she likes, stopping to resume her commentary for the horizontal crowd in the bed.
He's gonna die! she exults, referring to the hapless estate agent sitting at the table with the hungry Dracula/Klaus Kinski.
Sonja's doe eyes glitter expectantly. Her face seems able to accommodate every expression of feeling: tears, grimaces, laughter and glorious smiles lie at the ready. She stands at her cinematic watchpost like an exhilarated child, occasionally turning to check that we're still along for the ride. Oh yes, we are.
All God's Children Can Dance will be shown at the Venice Film Festival, 29 August - 8 September, and the Rome Film Festival, 13-21 October. Haruki Murakami's After the Quake, which includes the short story the film is based on is available at bookstores everywhere. Kinski/Herzog is a boxed set of DVDs from Atrantic, including six of the odd couple's films. You can find Nastassja Kinski's movies at your local DVD shop