Kinskey was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1903. He fled the chaos of the Russian Revolution and performed on the stage in both Europe and South America before he started acting in the United States in New York City in 1921. He performed in the road production of Al Jolson's musical, Wonder Bar, before making his first film appearace, in 1932, when was given a small part as a radical in the Ernst Lubitsch's comedy, Trouble in Paradise. A year later, he would play an agitator in the Marx Brothers' comedy, Duck Soup. He would continue to perform in small parts, mostly as foreigners and often in a comedic role, in such films as Les Misérables, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, The Garden of Allah, The Big Broadcast of 1938, That Night in Rio, Three Blind Mice, Everything Happens at Night, and