Kimila Ann Basinger was born on December 8, 1953, in Athens, Georgia, to Don, a jazz musician and loan-company manager, and Ann, a former model, champion swimmer, and water ballet performer.

She is the daughter of Oscar winning actor Jon Voight and actress Marcheline Bertrand, used her middle name as her last name (French translation of beautiful), probably in order to succeed independently of her father's success as an actor.

It was in New York that Eileen Ford of the Ford Modeling Agency met Kim and offered her a modeling contract. At first, Basinger refused the offer since she was more passionate about singing and acting.

She studied acting at the Lee Strassberg Institute, and had her first role as a German dominatrix in her school play ROOM SERVICE. She got her first Hollywood starring role in the movie HACKERS. She portrayed the only female in the group capable of reaching elite status in the hacker business. She followed up that initial success with the film FOXFIRE, which is based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates.

Thanks to her performance in NBC's Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold (in 1978), Basinger won the female lead on the network's 1979 remake of From Here to Eternity and made her feature film debut in 1981's Hard Country. Although she was getting roles, Basinger felt that a spread in Play..boy was necessary to increase her status in the public eye, so she posed for the magazine in February of 1983.

In 1984, she co-starred in The Natural with Robert Redford and in 1986, she starred in the sexy box-office smash 9 1/2 Weeks, with Mickey Rourke. It was this film that made Basinger more than a hot property; she became the key to high ticket sales. In 1989, Basinger starred as Vicky Vale in the hugely successful Batman, which led to a romance with Prince