Margaux Hemingway

Margaux Louise Hemingway (February 16, 1955 – July 1, 1996) was a film actress and model who appeared in several movies. She was born in Portland, Oregon, the sister of actress Mariel Hemingway and the granddaughter of writer Ernest Hemingway. In addition to Mariel Hemingway, she had another sister, Joan. She grew up on her grandfather's farm in Ketchum, Idaho.

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Biography

Early life

Hemingway was named for the wine, Château Margaux, which her parents, Puck and Jack Hemingway (the son of Ernest), were drinking the night she was conceived. In later years, after giving up drinking alcohol, she spelled her name Margot. She struggled with a variety of disorders in addition to alcoholism, including bulimia and epilepsy. She allowed a video recording to be made of a therapy session related to her bulimia and it was broadcast on television. Due to dyslexia, she did not read many of the books her famous grandfather wrote. She once said, "I am not a Hemingway aficionado".

Career

Six feet tall, Hemingway experienced success as a model, including a million-dollar contract for Fabergé as the spokesmodel for Babe perfume in the 1970s. She lost the contract due to her unflattering image as a perpetually drunk typical model at Studio 54. She also appeared on the covers of Vogue and Time magazines.

She appeared in the 1976 movie Lipstick alongside her sister Mariel. The bad reviews of her performance were made worse by the critics' adoration of 14-year-old Mariel.

Her first marriage, to Errol Wetson, ended in divorce. They met when, at 19, she accompanied her father to the Plaza Hotel in New York City on a business trip, and four months later she moved from Idaho to New York City to share Wetson's apartment. On the rebound, she married Venezuelan Bernard Foucher, and they lived in Paris for a year. She also divorced him in 1985 after six years, and the end of the marriage left her feeling suicidal. Like her grandfather, she experienced occasional bouts of clinical depression all through her life. After a skiing accident in 1984, she gained 75 pounds and became more and more depressed. In 1987, she checked into the Betty Ford Center. In 1994, she went to a psychiatric hospital in Idaho to recover from a depressive cycle.

Hemingway experienced familial dramas throughout her life. Her relationship with her mother, Puck, was fraught with tension, but they did reconcile prior to Puck's death from cancer in 1988. She also experienced intense competition with Mariel, her younger sister and a more famous actress. In the 1990s, Hemingway went forward with allegations that her godfather had molested her as a child, and her father, Jack, and stepmother, Angela, resented the allegations and stopped speaking to her. Angela told People magazine, "Jack and I did not talk to her for two years. She constantly lies. The whole family won't have anything to do with her. She's nothing but an angry woman."

She supported herself later in life by autographing her nude photos from Playboy magazine, and endorsing a psychic telephone hotline. She enjoyed yoga and meditation. The last year of her life, she was looking forward to hosting the outdoor adventure series "Wild Guide" on the Discovery Channel.

Death

On July 1, 1996, the day before the 35th anniversary of her grandfather's suicide, Hemingway was found dead in her studio apartment in Santa Monica, California at age 42. She had taken an overdose of phenobarbital, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's findings one month later. Though her death was ruled a suicide, Mariel Hemingway long disputed this finding. Mariel's husband, Steve Crisman, said, "This was the best I'd seen her in years. She had gotten herself back together." On a December 22, 2005 edition of Larry King Live, however, Mariel said she now accepts the fact that Margaux committed suicide.

Her remains were cremated and Margaux was inurned in the Hemingway family plot in the Ketchum Cemetery in Ketchum, Idaho.

Filmography

Film credits include:

• Lipstick (1976)
• Killer Fish (1979)
• They Call Me Bruce? (1982)
• Inner Sanctum (1991)
• Double Obsession (1992)
• Deadly Rivals (1993)
• Dangerous Cargo (1996)