Kim Basinger

She was the shy schoolgirl turned blonde bombshell who’s enjoyed a glittering 40-year career. But along the way, actor Kim Basinger battled crippling anxiety and a turbulent love life.

When 17-year-old Kim Basinger walked on to her high school stage to compete in the Junior Miss Pageant, her peers were taken aback. She was the shyest pupil in the year – a girl so withdrawn her parents once tested her for autism. But surprise turned to silence as Basinger gave a pitch-perfect rendition of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from My Fair Lady.

“You could hear a pin drop, because they didn’t know I could talk much less sing,” Basinger later said. “I didn’t care about winning, I only cared about not fainting.” Despite her misgivings, she won the pageant and within a year had signed with the Ford Modeling Agency (now Ford Models) in New York, setting in motion a career that has lasted four decades.

Now 63, Basinger is one of the world’s most recognised actors, and she recently returned to the big screen in Fifty Shades Darker, playing the former lover of Christian Gray. It’s another risqué role for the star, whose breakout film was the erotic 9½ Weeks.

Born Kimila Ann Basinger in Athens, Georgia, on December 8, 1953, her mother, Ann, was a model and actress and her father, Donald, a musician. Yet Basinger, the third child of five siblings, shared none of their confidence as performers. Cripplingly shy, she would even sit alone at her own birthday parties.

Moving to New York in 1971 to model did little to bring her out of her shell. “She was totally innocent about the ways of the world,” agency owner Eileen Ford later revealed to Rolling Stone magazine. Basinger was soon earning almost $1000 a day, but she really wanted to act. For three years she studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, whose alumni include Grace Kelly and Diane Keaton.