Christopher Lawford, a member of the Kennedy family who wrote a memoir on addiction, dies at age 63

Christopher Lawford, an actor, author and member of the Kennedy clan who wrote a memoir on his years of addiction and subsequent recovery, and then encouraged efforts to help people become sober, died Sept. 4 in Vancouver. He was 63 years old.

The cause was a heart attack, told the Associated Press a cousin of former US representative Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.).

Mr. Lawford's parents were Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy Lawford, who were the sister of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy (DN.Y.) and Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) .

His father, a popular film actor in the 1940s and 1950s, was a member of Frank Sinatra's rat group, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Mr. Lawford grew up in Hollywood, surrounded by glamor, celebrity and temptation.

"I was given wealth, power, and fame when I took my first breath," he wrote in his 2005 memoir "Symptoms of Withdrawal."

In his book, he writes that Marilyn Monroe taught him to dance the Twist. He sat on Sinatra's knee and recalled that Judy Garland had come to play poker at his family's home.

He also wrote that he had already received a gift of scrimshaw – a carved whale tooth – from President Kennedy in the winter home of the Kennedy family in Palm Beach, Florida. He acted as a senior brother of the only son of President, John F. Kennedy. Jr.

Christopher Kennedy Lawford was born on March 29, 1955 in Santa Monica, California. He was 8 when John F. Kennedy was murdered in 1963 and 13 when Robert F. Kennedy was killed five years later.

Both of Mr. Lawford's parents had addiction problems before and after their divorce in 1966, and he said that he started using drugs as a teenager. He was addicted to heroin for a period of time, and in 1980 he was arrested in Colorado for impersonating a doctor for the purpose of obtaining prescription drugs.

"Opiates were my drug of choice," he writes in his memoirs, "but what changed my consciousness is my friend."

Despite his heavy drug use, Mr. Lawford graduated in 1977 from Massachusetts' Tufts University and in 1983 he graduated from Boston College with a law degree.

His father died in 1984 at the age of 61, after years of drug and alcohol abuse. That same year, 28-year-old Lawford's cousin David Kennedy, one of Robert Kennedy's sons, died of a drug overdose. Both were particularly close.

Lawford paid tribute to his aunt Joan Kennedy – Teddy Kennedy's first wife – for introducing him to an addiction treatment program in 1986.

"Joan did for me what no doctor, therapist, priest, or guru could do," he told the Palm Beach Post in 2006. "She took me to a compound church basement. of a diverse group of losers. live without drugs and alcohol a day at a time and many more.

In the late 1980s, Mr. Lawford – who looked a lot like his father – started a career as an actor. He has appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, including soap operas "All My Children" and "General Hospital". He played small roles in movies such as "The Russia House ", a 1990 spy thriller starring Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, Oliver Stone's rock movie" The Doors "in 1991, and the 2005" Indian Fastest "motorcycle movie to Anthony Hopkins.

He also played a naval officer in "Thirteen Days," a 2000 film about the missile crisis in Cuba, the real drama in which John F. Kennedy avoided a nuclear war with the Soviet Union in 1962.

In addition to his 2005 memoirs, Mr. Lawford has published other books on addiction and recovery, as well as a book on hepatitis C, which he acquired by way of intravenous.

"There are many days where I would like to be able to take back and use my kids more appropriately," Lawford told the Associated Press in 2005. "But all of this has allowed me to come here . I can not ask for a part of my life to change and still extract the understanding and life that I have today. "

He has studied at Harvard University and has lectured on drug addiction at Harvard, Columbia University and other university campuses.

Mr. Lawford's marriages with Jeannie Olsson and actress Lana Antonova resulted in a divorce. Among the survivors, there is his wife since 2014, Mercedes Miller, a yoga instructor; three children from his first marriage; and three sisters.

Mr. Lawford said that his childhood had taught him not to be misled about the lives and problems of the Hollywood stars he grew up with.

"We can recreate the days when Frank, Dean, Sammy and my father were together," he told the Boston Globe in 2005. "But they all ended up being dysfunctional and disjointed guys. And they once had everything. Money. Good pace. Success. Yet in the end, they were miserable, miserable, alone, angry, drinking. So what is it?