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Where Daryl Hannah is now as Love Story revisits the romance of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette
In the FX series Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, Carolyn voices her fear that if their relationship doesn’t work, she’ll always be remembered as JFK Jr.’s ex.
That was a label that was not very likely to stick to Daryl Hannah. Already, when she started dating Kennedy in 1988, Hannah was one of the most sought-after actresses in Hollywood. Although their celebrity relationship attracted a lot of media attention—and is again the subject of the spotlight due to the Ryan Murphy-produced show—their relationship hardly defined her career after their separation in 1994.
The split occurred two years after Kennedy had met Carolyn Bessette. In the TV series, Hannah—played by Dree Hemingway, the daughter of Mariel Hemingway and great-granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway—mostly is presented as a sort of introduction to the main love story.
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Love Story Producer Explains Daryl Hannah’s Portrayal
Despite the series focusing on revisiting Daryl Hannah’s romance with John F. Kennedy Jr., the producers did not engage the actress to discuss the cutting-edge, dramatized, inspired-by-true-events project.
Producer Nina Jacobson revealed to Gold Derby, “It’s our practice to always come from a place of compassion. Since we are so invested in John and Carolyn, it makes it so that Daryl Hannah, being an adversary to their relationship, she is the one that’s narratively opposing the story you want.”
While Carolyn Bessette, at the time of meeting Kennedy, was a Calvin Klein sales associate mostly selling to celebrity clients, Hannah was already a movie star of established fame. Therefore, she was much more familiar with the paparazzi and media scrutiny than the Bessettes.
Actually, Jacobson acknowledged that, though the series might illustrate her as a lover’s hurdle, the movie tried to depict complexity. “We went to some length to still honor her. Being a child of that world, she is more of a fish in the water. She does a lot of things in the movie that are pretty tough for Carolyn.”
Daryl Hannah on JFK Jr.: “Why Can’t People Talk About Something Else?”
The seasoned Hollywood star, Daryl Hannah, admits that the intense scrutiny over her romantic involvement with John F. Kennedy Jr. was quite overwhelming for her.
“It’s really getting on my nerves. I have to explain it all the time,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 1993. “Even this morning, when I called my plumber, he also asked me about it. Oh, my God, I am just trying to get my pipes fixed. Why can’t people talk about something else?”
Currently 65, the Splash and Roxanne star first became acquainted with Kennedy in the 1970s as they were teenagers vacationing their families in the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. Nonetheless, they both had other partners during much of the 1980s – John was dating Christina Haag, among others, while Hannah was with musician Jackson Browne.
At Lee Radziwill’s wedding to filmmaker Herbert Ross in 1988 in New York, Hannah and Kennedy reconnected. They were attending the wedding of Kennedy’s aunt and the producer of Steel Magnolias, which had recently starred Hannah, had reportedly introduced the two not long after People magazine named Kennedy “Sexiest Man Alive” that September.
During the following six years, their relationship was off and on, and sometimes other romances were involved. In October 1992, Kennedy came to California to support Hannah in the aftermath of her separation from Browne, and subsequently, he took her back to New York with him.
Daryl Hannah Refutes Speculations of Her Quarrel With Jacqueline Kennedy
During the time Daryl Hannah and John F. Kennedy Jr. were an item, it was rumored that his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy, was against the relationship.
“It’s a complete lie,” Hannah explained during a very few interviews in 2004 on The Howard Stern Show. “People just don’t necessarily know the real reason why we broke up, so people speculate, and then, I guess, that’s the only kind of idea they could come up with. And it gets repeated over and over, and then it becomes accepted as truth. It’s totally detached from reality.”
Besides that, Hannah revealed she got along “really great” with Jackie, but she prevented herself from giving more private details of their relationship.
Moreover, according to the reports, Hannah’s being around Kennedy was the source of tension in his initial relationship with Carolyn Bessette. Although their first breakup was caused by other factors too, it is stated that Bessette was upset by the news stories saying that Kennedy and Hannah’s love affair was going on again.
Daryl Hannah and JFK Jr.: A Love Affair She Has Almost Never Talked About
Daryl Hannah kept most of her love life with John F. Kennedy Jr. a secret. So, the details of their relationship can mean whatever one wants to make them.
Referring to the 2024 book JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral History by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil, Amelia Barlow— daughter of Kennedy’s friend John Perry Barlow—said that Daryl was “awesome” and that her love with John “felt like a fairytale, full of adventures. It felt kind of young and a bit maybe naive or immature, if you compare it to his relationship with Carolyn.”
The book unveils some other stories as well. For instance, it was a tough time for them in 1994 when, right before Jackie’s death, Hannah’s dog in John’s care got hit by a car in New York. He brought back the ashes to LA when he flew to Hannah. Historian Steve Gillon referring to what was said in the oral history that Kennedy was “deeply resentful” about having had to be at the funeral of the dog while his mother was dying of cancer.
Carole Radziwill remembered Daryl Hannah was buying alongside her “a proper funeral dress” for Jackie’s memorial service. The relationship was over. “It was visible… John couldn’t even look at her. I think she knew it too,” Radziwill shared in the book.
In J. Randy Taraborrelli’s 2019 book The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation, it was cited that Kennedy said to his friends that he and Hannah “should have separated long ago.”
Where Daryl Hannah Is Now
Carole Radziwill, who married John F. Kennedy Jr.’s cousin Anthony Radziwill in August 1994, revealed that John had “quietly rekindled his romance with Carolyn” before their wedding.
After the breakup, Daryl Hannah, who was involved in one of the most high-profile relationships of the time, mostly stayed out of the public eye. John and Carolyn’s lack of attendance to their funeral in 1999 and their silence publicly about the matter speak volumes of the situation. Over the years, she has never talked badly about her ex-partner.
Hannah, nevertheless, chose to be a completely different person and focus on being an environmental activist. The Kill Bill star was widely recognized for her advocacy of switching to alternative fuels after she turned her 1983 Chevy El Camino into a biodiesel vehicle. When people asked her why the car smelled like doughnuts or fries, she would reply because it was run on vegetable oil.
After a 2005 interview with The Times, Hannah summed up the effect of her childhood on her environmental convictions. The actress admitted that after her parents’ divorce when she was 7, she started doubting how the world worked.
“It was from that day that I began to realize that the world operates differently from the way I was taught in Sunday school and I wanted to live more in harmony with it,” she explained. “I have always believed that it ought to be possible to live in harmony with nature without having to lead a life of sacrifice. You shouldn’t have to be far too spartan to do it.”
Daryl Hannah: Activism and Speaking Out
One of Daryl Hannah’s environmental activism facets is protesting and getting arrested: in 2011 and 2013, while marching for the opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, she was taken to jail in Washington, D.C.
In 2017, Hannah joined several other women in officially accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexually abusing them. While talking to Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker, she explained her career suffered “instant repercussions” when she disclosed her alleged incidents with the film producer in the mid-2000s.
“I think that it doesn’t matter whether you are a famous film-star, it doesn’t matter whether you are 20 or if you are 40 years old, it doesn’t matter whether you report or not, because we are not believed,” said Hannah. “Besides not being believed, we are also verbally attacked, blamed and shamed.”
Family Life, Public Work and Union with Neil Young
Daryl Hannah has been characterizing her nature as private to such an extent that she barely gives interviews except for her work. Nevertheless, she was inspired to open up about the Harvey Weinstein incident because of a feeling of “moral obligation to the women who have been through much worse kinds of abuse”.
Hannah is consistent with the fact that she has hardly unveiled her love life to the public. Following the end of her liaison with John F. Kennedy Jr., she has been seeing different actors, among them Val Kilmer who confessed in his memoir I’m Your Huckleberry (2020), “God knows I have been heartbroken several times. But Daryl was the most devastating of all.”
Hannah and Neil Young tied the knot in 2018. It was her first and his third. Besides being partners in life, they also work together: in 2023, she was nominated for a Best Music Film Grammy as the director of the documentary, A Band a Brotherhood a Barn, about Young and his band Crazy Horse.
Hannah is currently combining her artistic work with the commitment to social causes and staying mostly out of the celebrity gossip that used to talk about the glamour of her romantic affair years ago.
Daryl Hannah Keeps On Directing Projects With Neil Young
One of the things Daryl Hannah and her husband Neil Young have been doing recently is contributing creatively to each other’s works. One of the projects she directed is the concert documentary Coastal. She told the Telluride Times in April 2025 that her intention was to show a side of Young that people didn’t see very often.
“He is so open in those moments, which is a huge part of his charm; it’s one of the things that you hardly ever see from Neil,” said Hannah. “I wanted to show the real Neil, the genuine, open and vulnerable person that he is, not only as a musician and a performer but also as a human.
Young has likewise acknowledged Hannah’s skill prerogative. While recalling her directing him in the 2018 Netflix film Paradox, he told The Independent, “I never doubted what she was doing because I knew it was good. I’m not sure a lot of people realize how brilliant she is; probably more are concerned about her looks than what’s going on in her mind.”
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