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Edith Minturn Sedgwick Post (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress, model and socialite. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's superstars, starring in several of his short films in the 1960s.Watson, Steven (2003), "Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties" Pantheon Books, pp. 210–217 Her prominence led to her being dubbed an "It Girl" (2025). 9780313339103, Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313339103 while Vogue magazine named her a "Youthquaker" in 1965.
Sedgwick left Warhol's The Factory scene 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. Sedgwick abstained from drugs and alcohol after meeting her future husband, Michael Post, and completed filming Ciao! Manhattan in early 1971. She married Post in July 1971, and died four months later of an drug overdose at age 28.
Despite the family's wealth and high social status, Sedgwick's early life was troubled. Initially homeschooling and cared for by nannies, the Sedgwick children were rigidly controlled by their parents. Being raised on their father's California ranches, they were largely isolated from the outside world and were instilled with the idea 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 Bulimia nervosa. At age 13 (the year her grandfather Henry Dwight Sedgwick died), she 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 her eating disorder. Her father severely restricted her freedom when she returned home.
All the Sedgwick children had conflicted relationships with their father (whom they called "Fuzzy"). By most accounts, he was narcissism, emotionally remote, controlling and frequently child abuse. He also openly carried on extramarital affairs with other women. On one occasion, Edie walked in on her father while he was having sex with one of his mistresses. She reacted with great surprise, but he claimed that she had imagined it, slapped her and called a doctor to administer to her. As an adult, Sedgwick told people that he had attempted to molest her several times, beginning when she was aged 7.
In 1958, Sedgwick's parents enrolled her at St. Timothy's School in Maryland. She was eventually taken out of the school due to her continuing eating disorder, which had progressed to anorexia. In the autumn of 1962, at her father's insistence, Sedgwick was committed to the private Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut. As the regime was very lax, she easily manipulated her situation at Silver Hill and her weight kept dropping. She was later sent to Bloomingdale, the behavioral health wing in the Westchester County division of New York Hospital, where her anorexia improved markedly. Around the time she left the hospital, she had a brief relationship with a Harvard student, became pregnant and procured an abortion, citing her present psychological issues.
In the autumn of 1963, Sedgwick moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and began studying sculpture with her cousin, artist Lily Saarinen. According to Saarinen, Sedgwick "was very insecure about men, though all the men loved her." During this period, she partied with members of an elite bohemianism fringe of the Harvard social scene.
Sedgwick was deeply affected by the loss of her older brothers, Francis Jr. (known as "Minty") and Robert (known as "Bobby"), who died within eighteen months of each other. Francis, who had a particularly unhappy relationship with their father, suffered several , eventually committing suicide in 1964 while at Silver Hill Hospital. Robert, her second oldest brother, also suffered from mental health problems and died when his motorcycle crashed into the side of a New York City bus on New Year's Eve 1965.
On her twenty-first birthday in April 1964, Sedgwick received an $80,000 trust fund from her maternal grandmother. In September 1964, she relocated to New York to pursue a career in modeling. In December 1964, she was injured in an automobile accident.
The first of these films, Poor Little Rich Girl (1965), was originally conceived as part of a series of films featuring Sedgwick called The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga. The series was to include Poor Little Rich Girl, Restaurant, Face and Afternoon. Filming of Poor Little Rich Girl began in March 1965 in Sedgwick's apartment; it depicted her going about her daily routines. Her next film for Warhol was Kitchen, which was filmed in May 1965 but not released until 1966. Written by Factory scriptwriter Ronald Tavel, the film stars Sedgwick, Rene Ricard, Roger Trudeau, Donald Lyons and Elecktrah. After Kitchen, Chuck Wein replaced Tavel as a writer and assistant director for the filming of Beauty No. 2 (1965), which was filmed in June and premiered in July 1965. The film shows Sedgwick lounging on a bed in her underwear with Gino Piserchio and being taunted by Wein off-screen.
Sedgwick and Warhol continued making films together — Outer and Inner Space, Prison, Lupe and Chelsea Girls— throughout 1965. The edited footage of Sedgwick in Chelsea Girls would eventually become the film Afternoon. However, their relationship began to deteriorate in late 1965, and Sedgwick moved on from the Warhol scene to the Bob Dylan crowd in early 1966. In May 1966, Warhol told the Los Angeles Times: "Edie was the best, the greatest. She never understood what I was doing to her. I don't know what's going to happen to her now." After being dismissed from the Dylan entourage and surviving a fire in her apartment in October 1966, Sedgwick began visiting the Factory again, looking for work. To help her out, Warhol put her in one last film, The Andy Warhol Story, with Rene Ricard satirically pretending to be Warhol. Filmed in November 1966, The Andy Warhol Story was an unreleased film that was only screened once at The Factory.
Warhol dubbed Sedgwick his "Superstar", and they began appearing together at various public events. The previously niche phrase "Superstar" was popularized and increased mainstream media attention the pair received. Sedgwick can be seen defining the term on The Merv Griffin Show, indicating that the word was not a staple in the general public's vocabulary before her appearance on the show.
In a photoshoot for Vogue magazine in August 1965, Sedgwick was photographed by Enzo Sellerio, wearing only hosiery and a black ballet leotard, as she balanced on the back of a leather rhinoceros. Vogue dubbed her an "It Girl" and a "Youthquaker". In November 1965, Fred Eberstadt photographed her for Life magazine under the title "Girl in Black Tights". Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and his wife dressed up as Warhol and Sedgwick for a Halloween party in 1965.
In 1966, Sedgwick was named one of the "fashion revolutionaries" in New York by Women's Wear Daily, alongside Tiger Morse, Baby Jane Holzer, Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, Rudi Gernreich, André Courrèges, Emanuel Ungaro, Yves Saint Laurent and Mary Quant.
Sedgwick attempted to forge a legitimate acting career. She auditioned for Norman Mailer's 1967 stage adaptation of his novel The Deer Park was being produced. But Mailer "turned her down … She was very good in a sort of tortured and wholly sensitive wa …She used so much of herself with every line that we knew she'd be immolated after three performances."
In March 1967, Sedgwick began the shooting of Ciao! Manhattan, a semi-autobiographical underground film co-directed by John Palmer and David Weisman. Due to her rapidly deteriorating health from drug use, the film was suspended. After further hospitalizations for drug abuse and mental issues in 1968 and 1969, Sedgwick returned to her family's ranch in California to recuperate. In August 1969, she was hospitalized again in the psychiatric ward of the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital after being arrested for drug offenses by local police. While in the hospital, Sedgwick met another patient, Michael Post, whom she married in July 1971.
Sedgwick was hospitalized again in the summer of 1970 but was let out under the supervision of a psychiatrist, two nurses and the live-in care of filmmaker John Palmer and his wife Janet. Determined to finish Ciao! Manhattan and have her story told, Sedgwick reconnected with the film crew and began shooting in Arcadia and Santa Barbara in late 1970. She also recorded audio tapes reflecting on her life story, accounts Weisman and Palmer incorporated into the film's dramatic arc. Filming completed in early 1971, and the film was released in February 1972.
When Post awoke the following morning at 7:30 a.m., he found Sedgwick dead. The coroner ruled her death as "undetermined/ accident/suicide". Her death certificate states the immediate cause was "probable acute barbiturate intoxication" due to ethanol intoxication. Sedgwick's alcohol level was registered at 0.17% and her barbiturate level was 0.48 mg%. She was 28.
Sedgwick was not buried in her family's Sedgwick Pie cemetery plot but in the small Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard, California. Her epitaph reads "Edith Sedgwick Post – Wife of Michael Brett Post 1943–1971".
Since Sedgwick's death, Dylan has routinely denied that he ever had a romantic relationship with her but did acknowledge knowing her. In 1985, he told Spin: "I never had that much to do with Edie Sedgwick. I’ve seen where I have had, and read that I have had, but I don't remember Edie that well. I remember she was around, but I know other people who, as far as I know, might have been involved with Edie. … I did know her, but I don’t recall any type of relationship. If I did have one, I think I'd remember."
In December 2006, several weeks before the release of the controversial film Factory Girl, the Weinstein Company and the film's producers interviewed Sedgwick's older brother, Jonathan, who claimed that Sedgwick told him she had aborted a baby she claimed was Dylan's shortly after she was injured in a motorcycle accident. As a result of the accident, doctors consigned her to a mental hospital, where she was treated for drug addiction. No records from a hospital or the Sedgwick family exist to support this story. Nonetheless, Jonathan claimed, "Staff found she was pregnant but, fearing the baby had been damaged by her drug use and anorexia, forced her to have the abortion."
In 1966, Sedgwick became involved with Dylan's friend, folk singer Bob Neuwirth. During this time, she became increasingly dependent on . In early 1967, unable to cope with Sedgwick's drug abuse and erratic behavior, Neuwirth broke off their relationship.
In 2022, Sedgwick's sister Alice Sedgwick Wohl released the book As It Turns Out: Thinking About Edie and Andy.
Actress and model Jennifer Rubin played Sedgwick in the 1991 film The Doors, directed by Oliver Stone. In the 2002 film Igby Goes Down, Amanda Peet's character, Rachel, is described as an "Edie Sedgwick wanna-be" and dresses in Sedgwick-inspired attire throughout the film.
A 2004 off-Broadway play entitled Andy & Edie was written and produced by Peter Braunstein. It ran for 10 days. Misha Moore, who portrayed Sedgwick, claimed to be the late model's niece. At the request of the Sedgwick family, The New York Times published a notice of correction.
In the 2000s, director Mike Nichols and actress Natalie Portman considered doing a film about Sedgwick and Andy Warhol but decided to film an adaptation of Patrick Marber's play Closer instead, which was released in 2004.
Sienna Miller played Sedgwick in George Hickenlooper's film Factory Girl, a fictionalized account of Sedgwick's life, released in December 2006. The film portrays Warhol, played by Guy Pearce, as a cynic who leads Sedgwick into a downward spiral of drug addiction and psychiatric problems. Hayden Christensen plays "Billy Quinn", an apparent conglomeration of various characters but a look-alike of Bob Dylan. Dylan was apparently threatening to pursue a defamation lawsuit, claiming the film implicates him as having driven Sedgwick to her death. Michael Post, Sedgwick's widower, appears as a taxi driver in one of the last scenes of the film.
In the 2007 film I'm Not There, Michelle Williams's character Coco Rivington is modeled on Sedgwick.
Directed by Melissa Painter and David Weisman, the 2010 short film Edie: Girl on Fire, accompanied the book release of the same title, with an archived audio interview of Sedgwick on CD.
The 2021 animated short film Too Late, by Polish artist Kinga Syrek, was a tribute to Edie Sedgwick's life story and was released for the 50th anniversary of her death.
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