Edie Sedgwick

Edith Minturn Sedgwick Post (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress and fashion model, who was one of Andy Warhol's superstars. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of the Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol's short films in the 1960s. She was dubbed an "It Girl", while Vogue magazine also named her a "Youthquaker". Sedgwick broke with Warhol in 1966, and attempted to forge an independent acting career. However, her mental health deteriorated from drug abuse, and she struggled to complete the semi-autobiographical film Ciao! Manhattan. She gave up drugs and alcohol after meeting her future husband Michael Post, and completed filming Ciao! Manhattan in early 1971. Post and Sedgwick married in July 1971; she died four months later of an overdose at age 28. Early life and education Edie Sedgwick was born in Santa Barbara, California, the seventh of eight children of Alice Delano de Forest (1908–1988) and Francis Minturn Sedgwick (1904–1967), a rancher and sculptor, and a member of the historical Sedgwick family of Massachusetts. Sedgwick's mother, Alice, was the daughter of Henry Wheeler de Forest, the president and chairman of the board of the Southern Pacific Railroad. She was named after her father's aunt, Edith Minturn Stokes, who was famously painted with her husband, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, by John Singer Sargent. She was of English and French Huguenot ancestry. Despite the family's wealth and high social status, Sedgwick's early life was troubled. The Sedgwick children were raised on the family's California ranches. Initially schooled at home and cared for by nannies, their lives were rigidly controlled by their parents. They were largely isolated from the outside world, and it was instilled into them that they were superior to most of their peers. It was within these familial and social conditions that Sedgwick by her early teens developed an eating disorder, settling into an early pattern of binging and purging. At age 13 (the year her grandfather Henry Dwight Sedgwick died), Sedgwick began boarding at the Branson School near San Francisco. According to her older sister Alice "Saucie" Sedgwick, she was soon taken out of the school because of the eating disorder. Her father severely restricted her freedom when she returned home.