Klaus Kinski
Birthday:
Birthplace:
Zoppot, Free City of Danzig [now Sopot, Poland]
Though he invariably looked sickly and tubercular, Polish/German actor Klaus Kinski rose to fame in roles calling for near-manic aggressiveness. His war career consisted primarily of a year and a half in a British POW camp. After this experience, Kinski took to the theater, where he rapidly built a reputation for on-stage brilliance and off-stage emotional instability. He made his first German film, Morituri, in 1948; three years later, he made his English-language movie debut with a fleeting bit in Decision Before Dawn (1951). Villainy was Kinski's film stock in trade during the 1950s and '60s, with several appearances in Germany's Edgar Wallace second-feature series and in such Italian spaghetti Westerns as For a Few Dollars More (1965). International stardom came Kinski's way via his off-the-beam appearances in the films of director Werner Herzog, notably Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1973), Woyzeck (1978), Nosferatu (1979), and Fitzcarraldo (1982). With 1989's Paganini, Kinski proved to be as colorful and chaotic a director as he was an actor. Kinski was the father of actress Nastassja Kinski, though the two seldom saw each other and were never close. He died in 1991.
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Highest Rated Movies
Filmography
MOVIES
Quotes from Klaus Kinski's Characters
| Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald/Fitzcarraldo: | That slope may look insignificant but it's going to be my destiny. |
| Hans Rudy Hofner: | We found... a child's butterfly collection... but some of zees butterflies... were not too friendly... |
| Don Lope de Aguirre: | â??If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the Wrath of God! The earth I walk upon sees me and quakes! But whoever follows me and the river, will win untold riches. But whoever deserts... |
| Don Lope de Aguirre: | If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the Wrath of God! The earth I walk upon sees me and quakes! But whoever follows me and the river, will win untold riches. But whoever deserts... |
| Don Fernando de Guzman: | All the land to our left and all the land to our right now belongs to us. I solemnly and formally take possession of all this land. Our country is already six times larger than Spain, and everyday we drift makes it bigger. |
| Don Lope de Aguirre: | Have you seen any solid ground that would support your weight? |
| Don Lope de Aguirre: | I, the wrath of God, will marry my own daughter and with her I'll found the purest dynasty the earth has ever seen. |
| Don Lope de Aguirre: | I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 198 pieces. Those pieces will be stamped on until what is left can be used only to paint walls. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water... more than his ration, will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees... then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of god. The earth I pass will see me and tremble. But whoever follows me and the river, will win untold riches. |
| Don Lope de Aguirre: | That man is a head taller than me. That may change. |
| Don Lope de Aguirre: | I think he needs to be a head shorter. |
| The Man With No Name: | It's a small world. |
| The Hunchback: | Yes and very, very bad. Now, come on. You light another match. |
| The Man With No Name: | I generally smoke just after I eat. Why don't you come back in about ten minutes. |
| The Hunchback: | Ten minutes you'll be smokin' in hell! |