{"id":180180,"date":"2018-09-06T02:03:26","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T06:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=180180"},"modified":"2018-09-06T02:03:26","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T06:03:26","slug":"author-actor-kennedy-scion-christopher-lawford-dead-63","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/09\/06\/author-actor-kennedy-scion-christopher-lawford-dead-63\/","title":{"rendered":"Author, actor, Kennedy scion Christopher Lawford dead at 63"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
\u201cSymptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption.\u201d (File Photo<\/a>: Christopher Kennedy Lawford\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PROVIDENCE, R.I. \u2014 Author and actor Christopher Kennedy Lawford, who was born into political and Hollywood royalty, sank into substance abuse and addiction and rose to become a well-known advocate for sobriety and recovery, has died.<\/p>\n

Lawford died of a heart attack Tuesday in Vancouver,\u00a0Canada, his cousin, former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, told The Associated Press. He was 63.<\/p>\n

Lawford was in Vancouver living with his girlfriend and working to open a recovery centre. He had been doing very strenuous hot yoga and \u201cthe transition must have been too much for him,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

Lawford was the only son and oldest child of Patricia Kennedy \u2014 sister of John, Robert and Ted Kennedy \u2014 and Peter Lawford \u2014 the English actor and socialite who was a member of Frank Sinatra’s \u201cRat Pack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was given wealth, power and fame when I drew my first breath,\u201d Lawford wrote in his 2005 book, \u201cSymptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption,\u201d the first of several books he wrote about his substance struggles.<\/p>\n

He wrote that his parents got telegrams predicting big things for him from Bing Crosby and Dean Martin and said he once got a lesson in doing \u201cThe Twist\u201d from Marilyn Monroe. The cover of his books shows him sitting poolside as a child with his uncle and soon-to-be-president John F. Kennedy looming behind him.<\/p>\n

He spent his youth frolicking with Hollywood stars on one coast and rubbing shoulders with political stars on the other, living between libertine Los Angeles and the hyper-competitive Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, where he was a big-brother figure to John F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can’t get much more fawned over than being a Kennedy male,\u201d Lawford wrote.<\/p>\n

His life with drugs began with LSD while at boarding school at age 14. In the years before he had experienced the assassinations of his two uncles and his parents’ divorce in 1966.<\/p>\n

Lawford leapt into deeper substance abuse in the drug-heavy culture of 1970s Hollywood, where his father also abused drugs and alcohol as his career faded. Peter Lawford died in 1984. Patricia Kennedy died in 2006.<\/p>\n

In his memoir, Christopher Lawford told tales of mugging women for money, panhandling in Grand Central Station and getting arrested twice for drug possession before getting sober at 30.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many days when I wish I could take back and use my youth more appropriately,\u201d Lawford told The Associated Press in 2005. \u201cBut all of that got me here. I can’t ask for some of my life to be changed and still extract the understanding and the life that I have today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick Kennedy, the former congressman from Rhode Island whose father is Edward M. Kennedy, said his cousin \u201cdid something very difficult,\u201d airing family secrets and temporarily hurting his relationships within the Kennedy clan when he wrote his book.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had the courage to know that he had to find himself, and he wasn’t going to be able to do it while holding on to the old family narrative,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

Lawford was \u201ctormented by the fact\u201d that for a time he was estranged from his sisters, Patrick Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the years of recovery, he ended up reconciling with his sisters, happiest I ever saw him,\u201d he Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

His life’s work became helping others recover \u2014 including his cousin.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the absolute cornerstone to my sobriety, along with my wife,\u201d Patrick Kennedy said (the former politician had been addicted to drugs and alcohol). \u201cHe was the one who walked me through all the difficult days of that early period.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his memoir, Lawford authored several more books on addiction and recovery, most recently 2015’s \u201cWhat Addicts Know.\u201d<\/p>\n

He worked steadily as an actor, with moderate success. He had a small part in 2003’s \u201cTerminator 3: Rise of the Machines,\u201d made appearances on TV shows including \u201cFrazier\u201d and \u201cThe O.C.\u201d and had recurring roles on the soaps \u201cAll My Children\u201d and \u201cGeneral Hospital,\u201d playing a senator in the latter.<\/p>\n

He told the AP in 2005 that his famous dual identities both helped and hurt him in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe names give you entree, absolutely, but it’s a kind of a double-edged sword,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople do pay attention to you, but nobody gets ahead in Hollywood unless they are really lucky or they deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is survived by his sisters, Sydney, Victoria and Robin, and his children, David, Savannah and Matt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PROVIDENCE, R.I. \u2014 Author and actor Christopher Kennedy Lawford, who was born into political and Hollywood royalty, sank into substance …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":180181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","mauthors-michelle-r-smith","mauthors-andrew-dalton","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}