What killed Margaux Hemingway?

Margaux Hemingway seemed to have it all, yet a drug overdose led the actress to an untimely death.

By Hara Estroff Marano, published on December 01, 1996 - last reviewed on July 01, 2009

Exactly what was Margaux continually searching for?

"Family support is the theme," a close friend says. "Without family support, you wind up with this litany of problems--bulimia, epilepsy, alcoholism--then you're a pathetic lost soul. How can you deal with these things, some of them inherited from your family? And then your family's not there. Maybe her dad just wanted to live the rest of his life without dealing with another daughter with problems."

* Rootlessness. Margaux had no real home. "Her friends were her home," said one friend at her memorial service in Santa Monica. And her friends were scattered all over the world, about which Margaux moved unusually freely.

She was constantly on the go and she loved visiting new places. Of course, there was usually a commercial motive behind these trips. However diminished her name, her face, and her celebrity, she was still wanted for personal appearances around the globe: a store opening in South America, a film festival in India, a talk show in Italy. She'd suck as much pleasure out of the trips as she could, hiking and exploring and meeting people.

She had just moved to a small apartment in Santa Monica from a place in neighboring Marina del Rey that she hated because it overlooked a parking lot. Installed happily in her new ocean-view quarters just a matter of days, she was ordered to vacate by the landlady; it's not clear why. And so she had to search all over again for a place to call home. On the day she died, she'd put a $3,000 deposit on a rental apartment in Marina del Rey, one friend says, proffering it as proof that Margaux couldn't possibly have killed herself—she was too money-conscious to needlessly spend a large sum. On the contrary, it's just such a setback as an eviction that can undo someone already feeling rootless, lonely, and deficient. These were feelings her friends rarely got to see; she always, they say, put on a positive face. "She was strong," says Sundlun, "and felt she had to be seen as strong." Home, even for a world traveler, is not just a place to nap between peregrinations. It's a highly symbolic refuge.

That Margaux was lonely was well known among her friends. She was hoping to find someone to share her life with. She had even recently asked an old friend—one she met at the beginning of her career—to marry her. And in the weeks before her death, she'd stepped up calls to friends.

It is not possible to sum up Margaux Hemingway by the appearance of limitations. She was much too spirited, much too colorful, always doing something outlandish. Gaston tells the story of their introduction: Margaux reached for her hand but shook her breast. Then they burst out laughing.

In all likelihood, Margaux died of the very bravado that her grandfather made so alluring. She added color to everyone's life and then went on to the next stop.

Much has been made of the fact that Margaux was not a reader and was unfamiliar with Papa's writing. But of all the Hemingways, and perhaps because those who do not master the past are doomed to repeat it (in psychology it becomes a repetition compulsion), she most lived out her grandfather's style, and style was what he had more of than anything.

Make no mistake about it, Margaux had great elan. She even changed the spelling of her name from the ordinary Margot to the more flamboyant Margaux, in honor of the wine alleged to have inspired her conception.

A longtime friend tells of Margaux turning up in France on the day the friend's daughter was to celebrate her third birthday. The daughter was terribly upset about not being home to have an American-style celebration. Fresh off the plane, Margaux announced, "Don't worry, boopsie, I have some tricks up my sleeve." She went into town, scoped out a costume shop, and, obviously inspired by the discovery of a bear costume, fashioned some sort of tutu for it. Before her transformation, she declared the circus was in town and that a very special guest had arrived for the party. And out came a marvelous Margaux bear. She danced. She leaped. She twirled. And she enthralled a room full of kids who didn't know her last name.

Sadly, Margaux couldn't openly show her own discontent and she couldn't get under the surface of it. God knows, she tried. But everything she tried was external; that Hemingway style becoming a curse. Without a turning inward—which, of course, would have been a cardinal violation of the Hemingway code, and for which she had no models in her family—the quest is conducted so as to guarantee no satisfaction. Or perhaps she finally succeeded in accessing herself and was overwhelmed.

The last person to speak to Margaux may or may not have been Caren Elin, a self-described teacher, chiropractor, and "reincarnationist." She had known Margaux for five years. They met over a mutual belief in reincarnation. Elin was not particularly chummy with Margaux. Margaux was a "spiritual friend" who, she says, wove in and out of her life.

Elin says she was surprised when, on Friday, June 28, fixed by the coroner as the probable day of death, she received a message from Margaux saying she needed help. On this all her friends agree--Margaux never before had asked for help.