Daughter: Klaus Kinski abused me

Klaus Kinski’s eldest daughter has claimed that the late German actor raped her when she was a child, showering her with gifts as he used her as a “sex object”.

Pola Kinski, 60, told Germany’s Stern magazine that her father, a prolific and mercurial actor who featured in films including Doctor Zhivago and Nosferatu the Vampyre, started abusing her when she was five or six.

“Whether one believes me or not, this is what happened to me. It’s the truth,” she said in an interview to coincide with the publication in German next week of her autobiography.

Klaus Kinski died of a heart attack in California in 1991, aged 65. He began acting in the theatre after the Second World War, gaining praise for his evocative stage readings. He achieved ­international fame after playing a villain in Sergio Leone’s ­spaghetti Western For A Few Dollars More, which starred Clint Eastwood.

Kinski is most famous for his collaboration with German director Werner Herzog. In films including Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Woyzeck and Fitzcarraldo, Kinski portrayed characters that mirrored his own volatile personality.

Although she said she told her mother of the years of ­alleged abuse when she was 
19, Pola Kinski said that she only felt real relief when her father died in 1991.