Kim Basinger seems to come and go at the box office. This week, the 46-year-old actress makes a new appearance in the movie,
I Dreamed of Africa. No, this is not a sequel to
I Dream of Jeannie. It is actually a movie based on a true story of a woman who left her comfortable life in Italy to start a new life in Africa with her son and her new husband.
Basinger did not begin her career in the movies. She made the difficult leap from modeling to acting in 1976 when she moved to L.A. She began with a few appearances in television shows such as
Charlie's Angels and
The Six Million Dollar Man. She moved on to movies in her film-debut,
Hard Country. A few years later, in an attempt to boost her career, she appeared in an eight-page layout in
Playboy. That same year, she appeared as a Bond girl in
Never Say Never Again and then starred opposite Burt Reynolds in
The Man Who Loved Women. The following year, she had a hit with Robert Redford in
The Natural and then made headlines (and sky-high ticket sales) with the controversial
9 ½ Weeks in 1986. She followed up that success with another as Vicki Vale in
Batman. Then she hit a slump.
Basinger was in several entertaining films, yet none ended up a hit at the box office. Among these roles were Holli Would in the partially animated
Cool World and Karen McCoy and then Carol McCoy in
The Real McCoy and
The Getaway (respectively).
In 1993, Kim Basinger had a hit in her personal life when she married Alec Baldwin. Two years later, 1995 brought another personal high with the birth of her daughter, Ireland Eliesse. Basinger then took a few years off, only to return triumphant in 1997 with an Oscar-winning role in
L.A. Confidential.
I Dreamed of Africa is her first film since that success.
Filmography:
Hard Country (1981)
Mother Lode (1982)
The Man Who Loved Women (1983)
Never Say Never Again (1983)
The Natural (1984)
Fool for Love (1985)
No Mercy (1986)
Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986)
Nadine (1987)
Blind Date (1987)
My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988)
Batman (1989)
Vicki Vale: I just gotta know, are we going to try to love each other?
Bruce Wayne: I'd like to. But he's out there right now, and I've gotta go to work.
The Marrying Man (1991)