Actress Nastassja Kinski paid tribute Wednesday to Wim Wenders and Roman Polanski, naming the directors as two of the greatest influences on her career.
Speaking for the first time about the “honor” of being featured as the face of the 72nd Venice Film Festival in September — in an arty poster that uses an image of her inspired by Wenders‘ 1984 film Paris,Texas — Kinski said she owed her “chance in film to Polanski“.
Kinski, who is in Yerevan, Armenia, where she is a guest at the 12th Yerevan Golden Apricot International Film Festival, told The Hollywood Reporter that Polanski was just one of “the wonderful directors I have worked with.”
Being chosen as the public face of the Venice festival — in a poster that also has a much smaller image of French actor Jean-Pierre Leaud was, she said, “a big surprise and honor'”.
She added: “I’ve been in films since I was 12 and I met so many people from everywhere … that I worked with all over the world.
“I started with the director of the image of the poster, and I feel that I am an artist among millions of artists and all of them represent a little part of me and I am part of them.”
Kinski, who also attended a UNESCO conference in Yerevan last weekend, said that working for “peace and love” was now “an important part” of her life. The conference of the U.N.’s international education and science body had been “an unique occasion to meet government ministers from the region,” she added.
“I consider my success and failures in life as equal now that balance each other out. You only learn by your failures in your life,” she said
Kinski refused to name her favorite director but said it had been “a gift to have been directed by such great directors. I consider myself lucky and now I am feeling good in myself.”
The actress first appeared on the screen in Wenders‘ 1975 film Wrong Move and was cast in the lead role by Polanski in Tess, his 1979 adaptation of Thomas Hardy‘s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
