Kim Basinger's acting

She wasn't famous for her acting.

She was in a TV show called Dog and Cat in the late 70's that only lasted for a few episodes. She was good in that, that I remember.

I thought she deserved it for LAC - she was really good. But no, I don't recall anything else that made an impression.

Kim Bassinger v. Daryl Hannah - who's better?

She’s lovely but not an actual actor.

Not a great actor, neither does she get in the way. I enjoy seeing her beauty on screen.

She was ok in 9 1/2 weeks.

Oddly, one of her most passionate performances was one of her first: a TV movie.

^ That's RIGHT! I totally forgot about that.

I thought she was effective in "My Stepmother is an Alien" which is a dumb but funny film. And she looked fantastic in Batman even if I thought the part was not well-written.

I never mind seeing her.

She was excellent in that Eminem movie. amd my son developed a hard core crush on her

Gorgeous on screen, the camera gets hard every time she shows up.

Believe it or not, 8 Mile is the best performance I've seen from her

that's the one i meant. for the life of me, I couldn't remember the name

She was very beautiful. Got lucky. I will always remember her nasty divorce from Alec Baldwin.

Doesn’t she own a town in Georgia? What’s that all about? I suppose if she looses it all she can move there and do a reality show version of Schitt's Creek?

I thought she was effective in “The Door in the Floor”. But no one saw that.

And for a long time, “9 1/2 Weeks” was my favorite movie. I loved her in that. She had her Southern accent in it, but her character’s mother leaves her a message on the answering machine and the mother has a grating New York accent.

More neuroses than an inbred poodle.

I liked her in Final Analysis. Eric Roberts was dangerous-haaawt in that film!

Kim was the cool, beautiful, blond flavor of the month for a time.

I always liked Darryl better than Kim. Darryl has been in better movies though.

I think she was wonderful in LA Confidential. Movie Stars should make movies, they are beautiful. Meryl Streep? Never a beauty.

Basinger is one of the very few women I can think of who is so magnificently beautiful yet inspires great empathy from women. It's a vulnerability and empathy. She and Michelle Pfeiffer were two women who were absolutely born to be movie stars. Basinger was amazing on the famous Angels in Chains episodes from CA and even though she was in a lot of crap, when she made her entrance, you couldn't help but stare at her beauty.

[quote] Basinger was amazing on the famous Angels in Chains episodes from CA

Sorry, what does the "CA" stand for?

She would have been a better replacement for Farrah Fawcett in Charlie’s Angels.

She beat the following for the Oscar:

Joan Cusack in In & Out

Minnie Driver in Good Will Hunting

Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights

Gloria Stuart in Titanic

Any of them would've been more deserving. Yes, even Minnie Driver.

R16 - Really? 9½ Weeks was your FAVORITE movie?? I'm at a loss for words..

I dunno r26...that was a pretty weak field. None of them were deserving that year.

I disagree with R28. Julianne Moore killed it in Boogie Nights R26; she should have swept that year easily. You are so right - Kim's was possibly the worst performance of the bunch. To even compare it to Julianne's work was ridiculous and to actually award Basinger was criminal.

Her nice memories of the late Curtis Hanson.

Aha, Charlie's Angels, thanks, R24. There she is with Bosley or whatever they called him. She looks like she she just arrived from Georgia. She's heartbreakingly young and beautiful.

They absolutely don’t make them like this anymore.

She was pre-filler, pre-Botox etc. you either had it or you didn’t.

Another photo from Charlie's Angels. Basinger says an awful lot with this image. It was obvious she was destined for more than a t&a tv show.

R29 Joan Cusack would have been a great win, too.

I saw her in one of those Fifty Shades movie and her face had so much Botox that it was weird. Her neck looked old but her face was taut and tight.

I do think she is a good actress. She is a very underrated comedic actress. In the late '80s she did a few comedies - Nadine, Blind Date and My Stepmother is an Alien as referenced by r9 - and she was great in those.

In the early '90s she became more famous for her flops and the shit she and Alec Baldwin stirred on the set of the flop The Marrying Man. I was surprised she was able to float to a comeback with LA Confidential. Still don't think she was deserving. I thought Joan or Julianne were more deserving. But I'm glad Kim won over the old bitch in Titanic.

R26 Please! I remember one critic said that Driver's character was so skimpy she should've been called "love interest."

Of the nominees, Moore gave by far the best performance, but Basinger's was second.

R25 I think she was their first choice to replace Farrah but she turned them down.

Driver had one good scene in GWH, where she told the joke about the elderly couple and the blow job.

I only saw her in Batman and then after and never thought she was beautiful- piggy eyes, greasy, kind of inbred looking to me. I’ve never “gotten” her.

Basinger and Pfeiffer would have been perfect Hitchcock blondes.

SHE'S A PIG!

I absolutely love Kim Basinger. “The Burning Plain” is my favorite, even though I like her in any movie.

A beautiful woman, no question, but never much of an actress. She was affecting in “LA Confidential” and it seemed that a lot of folks were surprised she could act at all — which she managed to finesse all the way to an Oscar win.

She was so fucking beautiful in 9 1/2 weeks. Bears repeating.

Was she basically playing herself in LA Confidential?

Basinger could never have been a Hitchcock blonde because she's too vulnerable. Cybill Shepherd and Sharon Stone are more prototypical.

No to Cybill Shepherd as a Hitchcock Blonde -- she's too brassy.

Sharon Stone, definitely. Michelle Pfeiffer, too. Maybe Margot Robbie.

Basinger could have been an earlier Hitchcock blonde, stepping in for Joan Fontaine or Madeleine Carroll.

I thought she was funny playing drunk in Blind Date.

Remember this one?

She was OK in Fool for Love too, although the movie was hopelessly stagey.

I liked her in "Nadine" and "The Natural".

More of a model than anything else.

She looks nice enough but was actually quite bad in a lot of films to me. I'm surprised at how generous this thread is by DL standards! I mean even in better roles and better films she really had zero actual screen presence. No effect on the audience whatsoever, monotonous and wooden line deliveries, and no ability to transform or show any range or modulation. Even though the character descriptions are different, all her performances are largely the same.

She WOULD go down in history as one of the least talented women to win an Oscar but she's so boring and unmemorable that i'm not sure she will go down in history at all.

I did like her okay in 8 Mile and The Burning Plain, but even then she didn't do anything that umpteen better actresses could have done much better.

Didn’t she marry and divorce Alec twice?

She’s was absolutely gorgeous and everything looks real, and I’m assuming it is. She and Alec were a gorgeous couple.

Wonder why they eventually divorced twice? Lol! JK. We all know one of these two definitely has anger issues. And maybe he expected her to be his brood mare, and she was one and done after the daughter.

We never have to wonder about Alec being in the closet. Anyone who marries his ex-wife again, and goes ballistic after the divorce, is definitely straight.

That’s why I’m always puzzled y the claims that Brad Pitt is 100% gay? His divorce from his ex is a typical hetero divorce. Only straight couples go nuts like that. If the stories about his divorce from Angelina are true, then let me be the first to say that insane divorces between opposite sex partners, are the hallmark of straight men and women. Perhaps bi, but definitely not lavender marriages. Lavender marriages divorce quietly, while real heterosexuals oftentimes are messy AF. Just like Kim & Alec.

r51, No Mercy was the first R-rated film I paid to see alone when I turned 17.

She is hilariously funny in her small part in "Pret a Porter"--basically she is the only truly brilliant thing in that whole movie.

R40 well, she is from the South...

Basinger and Baldwin never got back together after their divorce. It was a long and acrimonious separation and eventuality of paperwork to deal with support and minor piglet, as we all know the girl, unfortunately. THANKS DAD!

I remember seeing Kim in an HBO show about anxiety and depression, she has struggled with it all of her life.

She supposedly has an allergic reaction to sunlight.

It does make you wonder why she chose a profession in the spotlight. (No pun intended.)

Dead behind the eyes.

R62 That might be why she has good skin. Or at least she did the last time I saw her.

My sister has always been extremely sun sensitive and she has amazing skin as a thirtysomething.

she and alec were both so damn beautiful and sexy as hell in their remake of the old mcqueen/macgraw film "the getaway" back in 1994.. a entertaining movie... alec looking male model handsome and hairy chested in his white "wife beater" oh yeah! kim looking gorgeous in anything she wore and their steamy shower together, although much much more could have been shown of both their bodies in that scene!...

I think she’s far better than Daryl Hannah.

And in terms of beauty, I can’t think of a more gorgeous woman. She is what Gwyneth Paltrow thinks she looks like.

Is that what she calls it?

Huh.

R67 That was a deliciously truthful blow. Nicely done.

[quote]She supposedly has an allergic reaction to sunlight.

I remember hearing that around 1990. I always thought that was bullshit because that allergy came out of nowhere. I think the real reason was that she had some sort of face peel or was routinely applying Retin-A. Either way it meant sun avoidance at all cost.

Thank, r69, I’m here all week!

R70 I would have thought that too if I hadn't seen that HBO show. She was/is a fucking basket case.

As far as looks go, it’s so true, Gwyneth doesn’t even come close.

Didn't she win the Oscar because HW was so in love with a movie about LA.?

Plus the great movie. I liked Kevin in that movie.

As much as I love "LA Confidential," it seemed like Kim Basinger & Russell Crowe were in two different movies. It was as if KB was watching RC act (hammy) and waiting for him to be done "acting" so that she could say her lines. Yes, the movie was supposed to be stylized. She was too mature for RC. In retrospect, not much chemistry between KB and RC.

Nicole Kidman was originally supposed to have Basinger's part in LA Confidential but had to drop out. If she'd stayed in, it would have been the unusual situation of a major Hollywood production having 3 Australian leads, albeit all of them acting with American accents.

She is the prototypical Southern Beauty Queen. Her stunning looks were ingrained as her only true value. She never had to lift a finger in life including receiving any type of education. She suffers from anxiety and depression, including bouts of Agoraphobia. Her inevitable move to acting was someone was the product of that background. No wonder she seems miserable.

edit "someone was", on a phone.

At the start of her career, everyone thought her last name was Bass-in-jur.

R79 I thought that’s how you say it’!

I think she won the Oscar partly due to the Boxing Helena producers suing her for quitting the film. A lot of the actors in the actors branch can relate to being fucked over by producers. Plus they needed to give LAC something considering it was going to lose in the other categories. She really did nothing special in the film other than look like Veronica Lake somewhat. Cusack was in a comedy which hardly get rewarded. Moore in a film about the porn industry which the Oscar voters didn’t want to endorse. Driver was brand new up against veteran actresses. And Stuart was unremarkable I think in Titanic. Stuart actually tied with Basinger at the SAG awards.

I watch Cellular everytime I see it on TV, because it's just such an entertaining B-movie. But Basinger is remarkably wooden in it; you know you're a shitty actor when even Jason Statham and Chris Evans act circles around you.

Bless the Child is an underrated camp classic too, but everyone's awful in that one, not just Basinger.

Didn’t Basinger back out of boxing Helena a few weeks before shooting was to begin? I don’t think she was fucked over.

Also her and Baldwin has horrible reputations at the time and Neil Simon wrote an op Ed about how awful they were.

I remember all the stories that came out about her and Baldwin fucking on that movie in the trailer. They were loud about it and were doing it every chance they could.

R83 Basinger didn’t like the script so she walked. There was a judgment against her for 8 mil but eventually it was settled for less. She had to declare bankruptcy, so I think there was some sympathy for her in the acting community, thus her Oscar win. She should’ve just done the film, especially considering some of the lousy ones she’s done.

They sure were a gorgeous couple, though. Incredible to go from Basinger to Hilary the bland yoga Frau.

Hilaria, the name suits her; her thirstiness is laughable.

Madonna was supposed to be in Boxing Helena too. You know a movie's bad when even Madge thinks that the script sucks!

Yeah, I've never seen it, but I'm not interested in a movie about a woman who gets her arms and legs chopped off. Hard pass.

You didn't miss anything. It's a really shitty movie with an icky subtext.

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Though it all turns out to be the narrator's sick fantasy in the end. Helena is actually fine, arms and legs still attached.

I saw Kim in Prescott, Arizona, when she and Alec were filming The Getaway. She was about five feet away. Obviously beautiful, in heavy makeup. An assistant was holding an umbrella for her even though they were in the shade. Watching them film was better than the movie.

Real tits, a rarity these days.

R92 Kim

She dated Prince. I imagine that she towered over him.

“Academy Award winner Kim Basinger” — a phrase that prompts an eye-roll from me.

And speaking of Academy Awards, didn’t she catch some (justifiable) flack the year she appeared as a presenter and in her opening comments, went off script and scolded the Academy for not recognizing “Do the Right Thing”? Was that the year she wore that hideous gown with the musical notes?

r95, this was the dress she wore the night she scolded the Academy. I believe she designed it herself.

I miss the gorgeous 80s/90s blondes like Basinger, Stone and Pfeifer. Now wacko Hollywood would be afraid of seeming racist for promoting a woman like this. They’d prefer some mixed race mediocrity.

R96, yikes that’s awful. Do the gold etters have any meaning?

Kim is a surprisingly good singer.

wow, that's news