Initially a TV starlet, she shot to fame as a Bond girl in and enjoyed a long heyday over the next two decades. Basinger began her career as a model and switched to acting in She appeared in several television productions, including a remake of From Here to Eternity , before making her feature debut in the rural drama Hard Country Hailed as a sex symbol of the s and s, Basinger first gained widespread attention for her performance of Domino Petachi in the James Bond entry Never Say Never Again For her femme fatale portrayal in L.
Basinger's portrayal of Elena Lincoln in the lattermost earned her a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress after five previous nominations. She had a high-profile relationship between marriages with musician Prince , and is the mother of social media influencer Ireland Baldwin from her marriage to Baldwin.
Basinger was born in Athens, Georgia , on December 8, Army soldier, he landed in Normandy on D-Day. Basinger's ancestry includes English , German , and Ulster Scots. Basinger studied ballet from about age three to her mid-teens. By her mid-teens, she grew in confidence and successfully auditioned for the school cheerleading team. While she didn't win at the state level, her beauty was profiled in the national program. Basinger was offered a modeling contract with the Ford Modeling Agency , [ 3 ] but turned it down in favor of singing and acting, and enrolled at the University of Georgia.
She soon reconsidered and went to New York to become a Ford model. I couldn't stand it. I felt myself choking. She also appears on the cover of the debut album by the band Survivor. She appeared in hundreds of advertisements throughout the early s, most notably as the Breck Shampoo girl.
In , after four years as a cover girl, Basinger quit modeling and moved to Los Angeles to act. Her Playboy shoot was not published until , when Basinger used it to promote her breakthrough role as the Bond girl Domino Petachi in Never Say Never Again , where she starred opposite Sean Connery. In his review of the film, Gary Arnold of The Washington Post said Basinger "looks like a voluptuous sibling of Liv Ullmann and has a certain something. Blake Edwards cast her twice in his films; as a beautiful woman married to a Texas millionaire in The Man Who Loved Women , and as an apparently shy woman who goes on a date with a workaholic man in Blind Date Robert Altman cast Basinger in the role of a woman hiding from her former lover at an old motel in Fool for Love Roger Ebert praised the film, comparing it to Last Tango in Paris , and said Basinger helped "develop an erotic tension [ Academy Award -winning writer-director Robert Benton also cast her in the title role of a slightly pregnant woman in trouble for Nadine While most of the films Basinger starred in during this period were released to varying degrees of success, they helped to establish her as an actress.
