Daryl Hannah

• 1. Introduction

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  Daryl Hannah, born in Chicago on the 3rd of December 1960, once chained herself to a walnut tree and stayed there for three weeks. The tree stood on a farm in South Central Los Angeles. Most audiences knew her from the screen instead. She was a mermaid, a replicant in a science fiction classic, and a one-eyed assassin. She has appeared in more than a hundred film and television productions since the 1970s. Yet she grew up so withdrawn that school and home both felt like places to endure. How does a child like that end up on screen, behind the camera, and in police custody at protests? And what did the work cost her along the way?

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• 2. A Shy Child

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  Donald Christian Hannah, her father, owned a tugboat and barge company, and her mother, Susan Jeanne Metzger, was a producer and former schoolteacher. After the couple divorced, her mother married businessman Jerrold Wexler, whose brother was the cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Daryl grew up in Long Grove, Illinois, with siblings Don and Page Hannah and a maternal half-sister, Tanya Wexler. She was raised Roman Catholic, while her stepfather was Jewish.

  Insomnia first pulled the young Hannah toward movies. She has said she was very shy, and as a small child she was emotionally isolated and struggled in school. She was diagnosed with autism. Medical professionals urged her parents to have her institutionalized and medicated. Her mother chose a different course and moved with her daughter to Jamaica for a time, hoping a change of scenery would help.

  Hannah later attended the progressive Francis W. Parker School in Chicago. She then enrolled at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she studied ballet and acting and majored in theatre. Her path onward led to a Brian De Palma film set.

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• 3. Rise Of A Star

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  The Fury, a supernatural thriller released in 1978, marked her screen debut at the age of 17. Rachel Ward appeared alongside her in the horror film The Final Terror. That picture was shot in 1981 but did not reach audiences until 1983.

  In 1982 Hannah played Pris, an acrobatic and violent replicant, in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. She performed some of her own gymnastic stunts. The same year brought the summer hit Summer Lovers. Then came Ron Howard's fantasy comedy Splash in 1984, in which she played a mermaid opposite Tom Hanks. The role won her wide recognition and a Saturn Award for Best Actress. Also in 1984 she co-starred with Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts in The Pope of Greenwich Village.

  In 1985 Hannah sang backing vocals and appeared in the music video for "You're a Friend of Mine," performed by Clarence Clemons and Jackson Browne. She also appeared in Browne's video for "Tender Is the Night." In 1986 she took the lead in the film version of the best seller The Clan of the Cave Bear. That year she also appeared in Legal Eagles, which starred Robert Redford and Debra Winger.

  Wall Street, released in 1987, won Academy Awards, but her part in it earned her a Razzie Award. The same year she played the title role in Fred Schepisi's Roxanne, a modern retelling of Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac. Critic Roger Ebert described her performance as "sweet" and "gentle." In 1988 she starred opposite Peter O'Toole in High Spirits. In 1989 she appeared in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors and in Steel Magnolias, with Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine and Julia Roberts. Her next decade would bring a pair of comedies with Jack Lemmon.

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• 4. Detours And Comeback

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  In 1993 Hannah played the daughter of Jack Lemmon's character in Grumpy Old Men, and she returned for the sequel in 1995. In 1993 she also played Nancy Archer in the HBO comedy remake of Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman. In 1995 she appeared as Leann Netherwood, a homicidal sociopath, in The Tie That Binds. In 1998 she was the co-lead opposite Christopher Reeve in a made-for-television remake of Rear Window. That same year she played Morticia Addams in the direct-to-video film Addams Family Reunion.

  In 2000 Hannah took on the role Marilyn Monroe made famous in The Seven Year Itch, on London's West End. The part helped her overcome stage fright. Lizzie Loveridge of Curtain Up! called the play the "perfect vehicle" for Hannah to "show her talents as a comedienne."

  Quentin Tarantino cast her in 2003 as Elle Driver, a one-eyed assassin, in Kill Bill: Volume 1. She returned for Volume 2 in 2004, and it brought her a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2005 she and Uma Thurman shared the MTV Movie Award for Best Fight. Some reviewers described this period as a comeback. They pointed to her work in Speedway Junky, Dancing at the Blue Iguana, A Walk to Remember and Silver City.

  Television films followed. They included the Syfy original Shark Swarm, Final Days of Planet Earth for the Hallmark Channel, and Kung Fu Killer for Spike. In 2013 she starred in Zombie Night, a Syfy film from The Asylum. That same year she appeared in Social Nightmare, an Asylum thriller about internet bullying. Robert Koehler of Variety wrote that A Closed Book let curious fans see what she had been doing lately.

  Beginning in 2015, Hannah played Angelica Turing in Sense8, a Netflix series from the Wachowskis. It ran for two seasons, and its final episode was released on the 8th of June 2018. In 2020 she starred opposite Dave Franco in The Now, a comedy series for The Roku Channel. Her own directing work stretched back further than any of these series, to a short film from 1993.

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• 5. Behind The Camera

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  The Last Supper, a short film, was written and directed by Hannah, with her as co-producer. Her documentary Strip Notes, from 2001, was a different kind of project. She directed and produced it and served as cinematographer. It recorded the research she did for her role as a stripper in Dancing at the Blue Iguana. Channel 4 in the UK and HBO both broadcast it.

  In 2002 Robbie Williams cast her as his love interest in the video for his song "Feel." She also created two board games with actress Hilary Shepard Turner, called Love It or Hate It and LIEbrary. She previewed LIEbrary on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2005.

  Hannah wrote and produced Paradox in 2018, a film that featured her husband, the musician Neil Young. She directed the documentary Mountaintop in 2019. In 2022 she directed another documentary, Barn, about Neil Young and Crazy Horse. It earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Music Film in 2023, under the title "A Band a Brotherhood a Barn." Her most recent directing credit in the source is Coastal, from 2025, a behind-the-scenes look at Neil Young's Coastal concert tour.

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• 6. Living Green

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  By 2006 Hannah's home, built with green materials, ran on solar power, and she drove a car that ran on biodiesel. In 2004 the National Biodiesel Board gave her its Influencer of the Year Award. She has been vegetarian since the age of 11 and later became vegan.

  She also made her own weekly video blog, DHLoveLife, about sustainable solutions. She is often the sound recordist, camera person and on-screen host. In late 2006 she volunteered as a judge for the "Convenient Truths" contest on Treehugger.com.

  Awards for this work piled up. In 2004 she received an Environmental Media Award for Ongoing Commitment. In 2006 the Water Quality Awards honored her environmental activism, and the Artivist Awards honored her environmental preservation.

  On the 4th of December 2008, Hannah joined the crew of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for Operation Musashi. She is a member of the World Future Council. She is also a patron of The Gorilla Organization, a UK-based charity working to protect mountain gorillas. She has worked to help end sexual slavery as well and has traveled around the world to make a documentary on the subject. Some of these commitments moved from volunteering to confrontation, beginning in the summer of 2006.

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• 7. Protest Record

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  The South Central Farm was established in the wake of the 1992 L.A. riots, so that residents could grow their own food. Its owner, Ralph Horowitz, had paid $5 million for the land and wanted the farmers out so he could build a warehouse. He had asked for $16 million to sell it. He turned the offer down when activists raised that sum after his deadline had passed.

  On the 13th of June 2006, more than 350 farmers, their families and supporters confronted authorities trying to bulldoze what was the largest urban farm in the United States. Hannah was arrested that day, along with actor Taran Noah Smith and dozens of other protesters. Shortly before her arrest, she told an interviewer by cell phone that she and the others were doing the "morally right thing." She was released from Century Regional Detention Center after several hours.

  On the 23rd of June 2009, Hannah was among 31 people arrested in southern West Virginia, protesting mountaintop removal. They included NASA climate scientist James E. Hansen. They sat in the middle of State Route 3 outside Massey Energy's Goals Coal preparation plant. They were charged with obstructing officers and impeding traffic, according to The Charleston Gazette. Hannah explained her reasons that June in a phone interview with Democracy Now!

  The proposed Keystone oil pipeline, running from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast, drew her back repeatedly. On the 30th of August 2011 she was arrested in a sit-in in front of the White House. In a piece for the Huffington Post, co-written with Phil Radford, she said she wanted to "shine the light" on President Obama's decision for "millions of voters" to see. In October 2011 she joined other opponents who rode horses and bicycles and walked from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to the Rosebud Reservation.

  In 2012 she served as executive producer of Greedy Lying Bastards, a documentary against climate change denial. In September 2012 she signed an open letter from environmental activist Tom Weis, asking President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney to withdraw support for the southern leg of Keystone XL. Climate scientist James Hansen and actors Sheryl Lee, Mariel Hemingway and Ed Begley Jr. also signed it.

  In October 2012, Hannah was jailed in Wood County, Texas, on a charge of criminal trespassing. She was arrested with Eleanor Fairchild, a 78-year-old landowner, while trying to block heavy construction equipment. The charge was trespassing, yet they had been standing on Fairchild's own land. On the 13th of February 2013, Hannah was arrested at the White House with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Conor Kennedy at a climate change protest. On the 26th of April 2014, she and Neil Young led a march in Washington by the "Cowboy and Indian Alliance."

  In the 2016 presidential race, Hannah endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders. On the 2nd of March 2025, she introduced herself at the 97th Academy Awards with the phrase "Slava Ukraini," voicing support for Ukraine amid the Russo-Ukrainian War.

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• 8. Private Life

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  Musician Jackson Browne was her partner from 1983 until 1992. Their split came amid unsubstantiated rumors that he had been physically abusive to her. Browne prevailed in a defamation dispute with Fox Television, which issued a retraction.

  John F. Kennedy Jr. met Hannah in the 1980s. People Magazine claims they dated for more than five years and broke up in 1994. In response to the 2026 television series Love Story, she said: "The character 'Daryl Hannah' portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John. The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue."

  Hannah began a relationship with Neil Young in 2014, and they married in 2018.

  In Ronan Farrow's 2017 exposé, Hannah was among the numerous women who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse. She said he sexually harassed her multiple times during the making of Kill Bill and once tried to break into her hotel room. Fearing he meant to rape her, she fled through a fire escape. She later said she believes Weinstein sabotaged her career in retaliation for refusing his advances, since she struggled to find acting work after Kill Bill.

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