Nikolai was born in 1976 in Paris, France, to German actor Klaus Kinski, and his third wife, Minhoi Geneviève Loanic, a model of 19 when they met, who was born in Vietnam and came with her family to France at the age of seven. The senior Kinski had two older daughters, Pola Kinski and Nastassja Kinski, born in Germany to his first and second wives, respectively. He took his family to California, where Nikolai lived mostly with his mother after his parents divorced in 1979. He was never close to his half-sisters, who lived most of the time in Germany.