But her performance--as a wealthy woman involved with Gerard Depardieu--was almost universally panned. She fared better with the critics as the wife in Wenders' "Paris, Texas", but that film was limited to an art-house crowd.

In 1984, she starred in two Hollywood productions, neither of which won widespread audience attention. Kinski was cast as the wife whom Dudley Moore thought was philandering in the unsatisfying remake "Unfaithfully Yours" and was alongside Jodie Foster and Rob Lowe in Tony Richardson's "The Hotel New Hampshire". She was miscast as the love interest to Al Pacino caught up into the colonial dispute with Britain in Hugh Hudson's box-office dud "Revolution" (1985). Most of her subsequent films in the 80s and into the early 90s were little seen in the USA including the American ones.

But Kinski's profile in American gossip columns and tabloids skyrocketed in the 90s when she gave birth and named Quincy Jones as the father of her daughter, Kenya Julia. Their relationship became fodder for tabloid reports and made Kinski more well-known than all her films combined. Her acting services were in greater demand and she scored a critical success as the skydiving student of Charlie Sheen's who appears to have died on her first jump--but has not--in "Terminal Velocity" (1994). Her work in US films then became more mainstream. She was the mother of a runaway teen who may be the son of either Robin Williams or Billy Crystal in the genial comedy "Father's Day" (1997). That same year, the busy actress co-starred with Ryan Phillippe and John Savage in "Little Boy Blue", a study of incest and dysfunction in a Texas family, and was opposite Wesley Snipes in Mike Figgis' study of marriage and infidelity, "One Night Stand".

In the mid-90s, Kinski also began to appear with some regularity on American TV. She was involved in a diamond heist in "Crackerjack" (HBO, 1994) and played a German war widow who flees to the USA to start life anew in "Danielle Steel's 'The Ring'" (NBC, 1996).

Filmography:

* The Wrong Move (1975)
* To the Devil a Daughter (1976)
* Tatort: Reifezeugnis (1977)
* Passion Flower Hotel (1978)
* Così come sei (aka Stay As You Are) (1978)
* Tess (1979)
* One from the Heart (1982)
* Cat People (1982)
* Exposed (1983)
* Moon in the Gutter (1983)
* Maria’s Lovers (1984)
* Paris, Texas (1984)
* The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)
* Unfaithfully Yours (1984)
* Harem (1985)
* Revolution (1985)
* Torrents of Spring (1989)
* The Sun Also Shines at Night (1990)
* Faraway, So Close! (1993)
* Terminal Velocity (1994)
* Crackerjack (1994)
* The Ring (1996)
* Fathers' Day (1997)
* One Night Stand (1997)
* Bella Mafia (1997)
* Little Boy Blue (1997)
* Savior (1998)
* Playing by Heart (1998)
* Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)
* The Intruder (1999)
* The Claim (2000)
* The Magic of Marciano (2000)
* Time Share (2000)
* An American Rhapsody (2001)
* The Day the World Ended (2001)
* Town & Country (2001)
* .com for Murder (2002)
* Paradise Found (2003)
* À ton image (2004)
* Inland Empire (2006)