Out of all Warhol’s muses, Warhol Superstar Edie Sedgwick is easily one of the most recognizable. Born on April 20, 1943, in Santa Barbara, Ca. It seemed that Sedgwick’s life would be doomed from the start. She had witnessed her father’s affair (which he covered up by calling her crazy and sending her to a mental institution). Sedgwick would experience other impactful life events such as the suicides of two brothers and an abortion at age 20.
Warhol Superstar Edie Sedgwick attended Radcliffe College but became bored of college life. Shortly after she decided to take up the party girl life and moved from Massachusetts to New York. Sedgwick began turning heads with her exciting and iconic fashion and had been appearing in fashion magazines. She was making a name for herself and experimenting with drugs well before meeting Andy Warhol.
She met Warhol in 1965, and the two quickly became inseparable. Sedgwick appeared in over a dozen Warhol films throughout the Sixties, beginning with his all-male film Vinyl. They went to endless events and parties together. He flaunted her in front of the cameras and helped to make her the star.
Sedgwick’s life appeared to spiral out of control after she met and fell in love with Bob Dylan, followed by a second abortion and Dylan leaving her to marry another woman. While in a relationship with Dylan she grew distant from Warhol and the drug use began to ramp up. She would run into money trouble but refused to give up the lavish lifestyle. Her last film credit is Ciao Manhattan, a film that heavily correlates with Sedgwick’s life in which she plays a character named Susan Superstar that was heavily based on her life. An almost too fitting name for her last film, that she would not get to see, as she died only weeks after they were done filming. Sedgwick, died in bed, of a drug overdose on November 16, 1971.
