Kim Basinger

Kimila Ann "Kim" Basinger (born December 8, 1953) is an Academy Award-winning American film actress and former fashion model.

Not long after penning the deal, Basinger was on the cover of numerous magazines. She appeared in hundreds of ads throughout the early ‘70s, most notably appearing as the Breck shampoo girl. She achieved a top model status by age 20, earning a salary of $1,000 a day. In the meantime, she alternated between modeling work and attending acting classes at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse as well as performing in various Greenwich Village clubs.

In 1976, after a five-year stint as a cover girl, Basinger decided to put her modeling career on hold and move to Los Angeles to begin a career in acting. After appearing in small parts on a few TV shows such as "McMillan & Wife" and "Charlie's Angels", her first starring role was a made-for-TV movie, Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold (1978) in which she played a small town girl who goes to Hollywood to become an actress and winds up becoming a famous centerfold for a men's magazine. She was a Bond girl in Never Say Never Again (1983), where she starred opposite Sean Connery. She did a famous pictorial for Playboy magazine in 1983, which Basinger has said led to good opportunities, such as Barry Levinson's The Natural (1984), co-starring Robert Redford, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Academy Award winning writer-director Robert Benton cast her in the title role for the film Nadine (1987). Other directors repeated her in their films, such as Blake Edwards for The Man Who Loved Women (1983) and Blind Date (1987)) and Robert Altman for Fool for Love (1985) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994). Her most prominent appearances include 9½ Weeks (1986), Batman (1989) and Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997) for which she received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the Golden Globe and Screen Actor's Guild Award. Hanson would cast her once more as Eminem's mother in the hit film 8 Mile (2002). She holds the distinction of being the only actress who has both posed nude in Playboy magazine and won an Academy Award.

In 1992 Kim was the guest vocalist on a re-recorded version of Was (Not Was)'s "Shake Your Head," which also featured Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, and reached the UK Top 5. This makes her also one of a few Academy Award winners for acting roles to have had a hit record, particularly in more recent years.