Christopher Lawford
Christopher Kennedy Lawford (March 29, 1955 – September 4, 2018)[1] was an American author, actor, and activist. He was a member of the prominent Kennedy family, and son of English actor Peter Lawford and Patricia "Pat" Kennedy Lawford, who was a sister of President John F. Kennedy. He graduated from Tufts University in 1977 and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Boston College in 1983. He later earned a master's certificate in Clinical Psychology from Harvard University and was a lecturer on drug addiction.
Christopher Lawford
September 4, 2018 (aged 63)
- Author
- actor
- activist
1988–2008
3
See Kennedy family
After struggling with addiction for 17 years, he became an actor, performing in several movies and television shows for over 20 years. He wrote several books, based on his own experience, about addiction and recovery. He also traveled around the U.S. speaking about his experiences with addiction for 20 years, and was a public health campaigner, working with organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN), and for the U.S. federal government.
Career[edit]
Acting[edit]
Lawford chose to become, like his father, an actor in the mid-1980s, after realizing that a law career would not suit him. He performed in commercials in Boston for two years, and then he and his wife moved to Southern California in 1988 so that he could pursue an acting career.[6] He worked in film and television for over 20 years. His acting credits included the sitcom Frasier and the drama The O.C. .[12][1] In 2003, he had a brief stint on the soap opera General Hospital, but was best known for playing Philip "Charlie" Brent, Jr. on All My Children from 1992 to 1995.[13]
Lawford had small roles in films such as The Russia House, a 1990 spy thriller co-starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Sean Connery, and the 1991 rock-music film The Doors, which was directed by Oliver Stone. Lawford played a Navy officer in the 2000 film Thirteen Days, a drama about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.[8][9] In 1997, Lawford had a role in the independent comedy Kiss Me Guido as the gay lover of the main character.[14] He also had a small role in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, co-starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, who directed Lawford in a 1990 episode of the HBO anthology series Tales from the Crypt ("The Switch") and was married to Lawford's cousin Maria Shriver at the time.[6] In 2005, Lawford appeared in the motorcycle racing film The World's Fastest Indian, co-starring Anthony Hopkins.[15]
Personal life[edit]
Marriages and children[edit]
Lawford was married and divorced three times.[1] He had three children, David Christopher Kennedy Lawford (named after his cousin David Kennedy),[2]: pp. 319–320 Savannah Rose Lawford, and Matthew Peter Valentine Lawford with his first wife Jeannie Olsson, an ad-sales assistant for New York Magazine. They divorced in 2000. In 2005, he married Russian actress Lana Antonova; they divorced in 2009. In 2014, Lawford married yoga instructor Mercedes Miller in Hawaii; they divorced in 2016. At the time of his death in 2018, he had been in a relationship with his girlfriend Kyla Resch since August 2017.[6][24]
Death[edit]
On September 4, 2018, after experiencing a medical emergency while at a yoga studio, Lawford died of a heart attack in Vancouver, British Columbia. At the time, he had been living with his girlfriend in Vancouver where he was working toward opening a recovery center.[10][25] Patrick Kennedy told the Associated Press that Lawford had been doing "hot yoga, which he did often, but the strain of it 'must have been too much for him at that point'".[26] Lawford's cousins Maria Shriver, Patrick Kennedy, and Kerry Kennedy took to Twitter after his death, honoring Lawford's work in addiction recovery.[27]