Mariel Hemingway (born November 22, 1961) is an American actress. She began acting at age 14 with a Golden Globe-nominated breakout role in Lipstick (1976), and she received Academy and BAFTA Award nominations for her performance in Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979).
She had leading roles in Personal Best (1982), Star 80 (1983), and the TV series Civil Wars for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. Hemingway's acting career slowed in the late 1990s, and she focused on advocating for mental health awareness. She contributed to the acclaimed documentary Running from Crazy regarding her family's struggles with mental illness.
Hemingway's sisters were Joan "Muffet" and Margot "Margaux"; the latter was a model and actress.[2]
Career in film
Hemingway's first role was with her real-life sister Margaux (also in her debut role) in the film Lipstick (1976), in which they played sisters.[3] She received notice for her acting and was nominated as "Best Newcomer" for the Golden Globe Award that year.[4] Her highest-profile role was in Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979), a romantic comedy in which she plays Tracy, a high school student and Allen's lover. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.[5]
In Personal Best (1982), she played a bisexualtrack-and-field athlete in a film noted for its same-sex love scenes.[6] In connection with Personal Best, she appeared in a nude pictorial in the April 1982 issue of Playboy and was on the cover.[7]
Hemingway in April 2017
She starred as Dorothy Stratten in Star 80 (1983), a film about the Playboy model's life and murder. Reports circulated for years that Hemingway had her breasts enlarged to play the role of Stratten, but during a 2007 appearance on the late-night talk and variety show, Fashionably Late with Stacy London, she said she had had the surgery before Star 80. Her breast implants were removed years later after they had ruptured.[8]
She was featured in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) as Lacy Warfield. Subsequently released additional footage showed an expansion of her role. She starred in the 1991–93 legal drama Civil Wars for ABC, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe, and co-starred with musician, artist, and film director John Mellencamp in the critically acclaimed 1991 film Falling from Grace. She was cast as the female lead in Darren Star's CBS drama Central Park West for the 1995–96 season; however, the show fared poorly with both critics and viewers, and after 13 episodes Hemingway was told that the show wanted her to accept a deep pay cut and demotion to recurring character status. She quit the series, which only lasted eight more episodes before being cancelled. In 1996, she had a leading role in the British TV movie September, playing the wife of Michael York.[9]
She has played a lesbian or bisexual woman in several films and television shows, including Personal Best, The Sex Monster, In Her Line of Fire, and episodes of the TV series Roseanne ("Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and "December Bride") and Crossing Jordan. Hemingway is heterosexual, but has said she formed a "big connection with the LGBT community" after Personal Best and enjoys taking roles in "cutting-edge" productions.[10]
Hemingway has starred in and co-produced videos about yoga and holistic living. In 2002, she published a yoga memoir, Finding My Balance. She is currently the host of Spiritual Cinema,[citation needed] a monthly television show dedicated to spiritual films. She has begun hosting a series of yoga practice videos known as Yoga Now, with guruRodney Yee.[11]
Hemingway worked on the documentary film Running from Crazy, directed by Barbara Kopple and produced by the Oprah Winfrey Network chronicling the Hemingway family's history of suicide, substance abuse and mental illness,[12] shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013. In October that year, Hemingway received a humanitarian award from the San Diego Film Festival for her role in the documentary.[13] Her memoir, Out Came the Sun, was released in 2015.
Personal life
Hemingway married Stephen Crisman in 1984. They have two daughters: Dree Hemingway and Langley Fox. They separated in 2008 and divorced the following year.[14][15]
In 1996, her sister Margaux died of a barbiturate overdose at age 42. She was the fifth to commit suicide in four generations of Hemingways and her family had difficulty accepting the fact of her suicide.[16]
In early 2011, Hemingway began a relationship with former stuntman Bobby Williams with whom she has co-authored a self-help book.[17][18] She practices Transcendental Meditation.[17][19]
In the 2013 television documentary Running from Crazy,[20] Hemingway talked of her bouts of mental illness and her still lingering issues with her siblings.[21][22] She spoke of her family's struggles with alcoholism, mental illnesses, and suicide. In particular, she mentioned how her sister Margaux's suicide continued to haunt her.[21][22] She also claimed that her parents' marriage was abusive and unhappy and discussed abusive incidents in her childhood.[a][21][22]
In her memoir, Out Came the Sun (2015), Hemingway discussed being hit on by older men in Hollywood, including Bob Fosse, Robert De Niro, and Robert Towne. Woody Allen invited her on a trip to Paris, but she realized that he did not intend them to have separate rooms. Though she declined his advances, she states she continued to "love him as a friend" and was grateful that they stayed in touch in later years.[5][23][24][25][26]
—— & Greenman, Ben (2013). Out Came the Sun: Overcoming the Legacy of Mental Illness, Addiction, and Suicide in My Family (1st ed.). Regan Arts. ISBN978-1941393239.
^She states in the documentary: "When I was really small, and I shared a room with Margaux, and my dad came in the room, you know... I don't wanna call it what it was, but it wasn't right, you know... um, it's hard to have a visual of that, you don't wanna see your dad doing those things, but I know it, I know it happened. I think that my dad abused the girls [Margaux and Joan], sexually abused the girls, um, when they were young. My dad, if you met him, was not, you don't think 'oh, pedophile', or this or that, you just didn't, that's not what came to your mind at all, at all, he was a beautiful man and in many ways, but I think it happened in drunk, you know, behavior, you know 'my wife doesn't love me', I don't know what the reasons were. You know 'I'm obsessed with my daughters', I don't know why a person can even go there.... I know people would say, 'there's no way in hell your father did that'. And yet, Margaux was obsessed with him, Muffet was obsessed with him, and my mother allowed me to sleep with her my whole childhood practically. I slept with my mom from age seven to age sixteen. But I witnessed it as a kid, so... that's why I thought it never happened to me, because... I don't know why it didn't, but I just assumed it happened to them and it didn't happen to me."[20]
^"Yoga Now: Accelerated Workout DVD". probidad.org. Archived from the original on September 9, 2015. Retrieved November 3, 2010. Longtime yoga practitioner and Hollywood actress Mariel Hemingway teams up with renowned instructor Rodney Yee ... through a combination of yoga, cardio, and proper eating habits
