Ernest Hemingway’s Family Tree: Inside the Tragedies and Triumphs of the Author’s 3 Famous Heirs
With 'The Sun Also Rises' turning 100 this year, take a look at Hemingway's granddaughters' and great-granddaughter's lives and careers
Ernest Hemingway is well known for his economical prose style and swaggering public image, but the author of such classics as A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises—which turns 100 this year—also had a legacy in Hollywood, as his granddaughters and great-granddaughter went on to become acclaimed actresses.
Though Hemingway died by suicide in 1961, his work remains iconic and eternally influential, and the actresses in his family line have carried on his story while establishing themselves as stars in their own right. Read on to learn about Margaux, Mariel and Dree Hemingway.
Margaux Hemingway: The ’70s It Girl who met a tragic end
Margaux Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s granddaughter, was born to Ernest’s son, conservationist and author Jack Hemingway, and Byra Louise “Puck” Whittlesey Hemingway in 1954.
Margaux, who stood 6 feet tall and had striking blonde hair and dark brows, made a name for herself as a ’70s supermodel, appearing on countless magazine covers and becoming a regular at Studio 54. In 1976, she made her screen debut starring in the film Lipstick. Margaux played a model who seeks violent revenge after being raped by her teenage sister’s music teacher. Margaux’s younger sister, Mariel Hemingway, also making her debut as an actress, played her sister in the film. Margaux then starred in the 1979 horror movie Killer Fish.
Margaux continued acting throughout the ’80s, appearing in the comedies They Call Me Bruce (1982) and Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984). In the ’90s, she primarily acted in low-budget genre movies like Inner Sanctum (1991), A Woman’s Secret (1992), Bad Love (1992), Vicious Kiss (1995) and Dangerous Cargo (1996). She had her final role in the 1996 TV movie Backroads to Vegas.
While she appeared to have a glamorous and privileged existence, Margaux struggled in her personal life. Her two marriages, to Erroll Wetanson and Bernard Faucher, both ended in divorce, and she battled drug addiction, epilepsy, bulimia and depression for many years. In 1996, she tragically died by suicide at 41. Before her passing, she accused her father of sexual abuse—an allegation that he denied, but which Mariel backed up.
Shortly before her death, Margaux was the subject of Hemingway: Winner Take Nothing, a documentary in which she grappled with her complicated family history, and she was set to host a nature series for the Discovery Channel.
In an interview with People, Margaux was candid about the challenges she faced, saying, “For me, becoming a celebrity was like being in the eye of a hurricane. Suddenly, I was an international cover girl. Everybody was lapping up my Hemingway-ness. They wanted to rub elbows with me or brush up against me.”
Mariel Hemingway: The acclaimed actress and mental health advocate
Mariel Hemingway, Margaux’s younger sister, was born in 1961, just a few months after her grandfather’s death.
After her first role starring opposite Margaux in Lipstick, Mariel had her breakthrough playing Woody Allen’s teenage girlfriend in the 1979 film Manhattan. The young actress received an Academy Award nomination for her role, and continued taking on provocative parts throughout the ’80s, playing a lesbian track-and-field athlete in Personal Best (1982) and a Playboy Playmate in Star 80, a 1983 film based on the murder of real-life Playmate Dorothy Stratten.
Mariel then had a supporting role in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). From 1991 to 1993, she starred in the legal drama Civil Wars, and she was in the cast of the short-lived 1995 soap Central Park West. In the ’90s and beyond, she could be seen in films like Delirious (1991), Falling From Grace (1992), Deconstructing Harry (1997), Little Men (1998), The Contender (2000), In Her Line of Fire (2006) and The Golden Boys (2008). She also appeared in episodes of Tales From the Crypt (1991), Roseanne (1994 and 1995), Crossing Jordan (2002) and Law & Order (2007).
Outside of acting, Mariel is a dedicated practitioner of yoga and has appeared in a variety of yoga videos. In 2002, she published Finding My Balance, a memoir based on her yoga practice. She also wrote the wellness books Mariel Hemingway’s Healthy Living from the Inside Out (2007), Mariel’s Kitchen (2009) and Running with Nature (2013).
Mariel has often spoken about her famous family’s generational trauma. In 2015, she published the revealing memoir Out Came the Sun: Overcoming the Legacy of Mental Illness, Addiction, and Suicide in My Family, and Invisible Girl, a version of her memoir geared towards younger readers. Mariel was also the subject of the 2013 documentary Running From Crazy, in which she detailed the many challenges she faced growing up in a family prone to mental illness and suicide and bravely shared her own mental health struggles.
Mariel married director Stephen Crisman in 1984. The couple had two daughters, Dree Hemingway, now an actress like her mom and her late aunt, and Langley Fox Hemingway, now an artist. Mariel divorced her husband in 2009 and has been in a relationship with former stuntman Bobby Williams since 2011.
In recent years, Mariel, now 64, has continued to act in films including Grace and Grit (2021), On Sacred Ground (2023) and God’s Country Song (2023). She’s also continued to speak out about mental health and established the Mariel Hemingway Foundation to help those who struggle with such issues.
Reflecting on her family in a 2022 interview, Mariel said, “It’s gotten to the point where my story no longer affects me. I mean, it does. But it’s not how I define myself. It’s healing for me to tell the story again and again. I learn something new about my family, about myself, about communication, about the fact that so many people have similar stories.”
Dree Hemingway: The indie darling and youngest Hemingway actress
Dree Hemingway, the great-granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, was born to Mariel Hemingway and Stephen Crisman in 1987.
Like her sister, Langley, and her late aunt, Margaux, Dree started out as a successful fashion model. She soon pivoted to acting and had her first lead role playing a sex worker in the low-budget 2012 film Starlet. Since then, Dree has continued to act in indie films, including Listen Up Philip (2014), While We’re Young (2014), Love After Love (2017), The Unicorn (2018), In a Relationship (2018) and Jill (2022). She will next be seen playing actress Daryl Hannah, who dated John F. Kennedy Jr. in the ’90s, in Love Story, the highly anticipated Ryan Murphy series about the political scion.
Dree, now 38, is in a relationship with Nick Delli Santi, who works in real estate. The couple has a baby daughter, Luce.
In 2025, it was announced that Dree would be serving as an executive producer on The Hemingway Files, an upcoming biopic about her great-grandfather’s final years. The actress spoke about her family’s legacy in a 2023 interview, saying, “I feel a huge connection to Margaux. She’s just a stunner. I almost named my daughter Margaux, but in some weird way I was like, it’s not time for that. I think because I grew up with the awareness of the depression, and the tendencies for alcoholism and addiction, that has kept me grounded. My parents never tried to sugarcoat anything for me. With my daughter, I think I’ll be open in the same way.”
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Woman's World does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.
