linguistic:translation
Film work

Kinski's first film role was a small part in the 1948 film Morituri. He appeared in several German Edgar Wallace movies, and had bit parts in the American war films Decision Before Dawn (1951), A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), and The Counterfeit Traitor (1962). In Alfred Vohrer 's Die toten Augen von London (1961), his character refused any personal guilt for his evil deeds and claimed to have only followed the orders given to him. Kinski's performance reflected post-war Germany's reluctance to take responsibility for what had happened during World War II.

During the 1960s and 1970s, he appeared in various European exploitation films, as well as more acclaimed works such as Doctor Zhivago (1965), in which he appeared as an anarchist prisoner on his way to the Gulag.

He relocated to Italy during the late 1960s, and found roles in numerous Spaghetti Westerns, including For a Few Dollars More (1965), A Bullet for the General (1966), The Great Silence (1968), Twice A Judas (1969), and A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe (1975). In 1977, he starred as the RZ guerrillero Wilfried Böse in Operation Thunderbolt, based on the events of the Entebbe raid.

Kinski's work with Werner Herzog brought him international recognition. They made five films together: Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), Woyzeck (1979), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1987). The working relationship between the two was contentious; Herzog had threatened, on occasion, to murder Kinski. In one incident, Kinski was said to have been saved by his dog who attacked Herzog as he crept up to supposedly burn down the actor's house. Herzog has refused to comment on his numerous other plans to kill Kinski. However, he did pull a gun on Kinski, or at least threatened to do so, on the set of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, after the actor threatened to walk off the set. Late in the filming of Fitzcarraldo in Peru, the chief of the Machiguenga tribe offered to kill Kinski for Herzog, but the director declined.

In 1980, Kinski refused the lead villain role of Major Arnold Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark, telling director Steven Spielberg that the script was "a yawn-making, boring pile of shit" and "moronically shitty". Kinski would go on to play Kurtz, an Israeli intelligence officer, in The Little Drummer Girl, a feature film by George Roy Hill in 1984.

Kinski co-starred in the science fiction television film Timestalkers with William Devane and Lauren Hutton. His last film was Paganini (1989), which he wrote, directed, and starred in as Niccolò Paganini.