Who is Kick Kennedy? All about RFK Jr.’s daughter
Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy is the eldest daughter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who made headlines recently when he ended his own presidential run and endorsed former President Donald Trump’s campaign.
Kick Kennedy, 36, has not commented publicly on her dad’s recent political ventures, and she has opened up in the past about establishing her own identity apart from her family's legacy.
“People ask me, ‘What’s it like to be a Kennedy?’” she told the New York Post in 2014. “Maybe it’s just the temperature of the water, but I’m just like, ‘I have no idea.’ When I see my face or name in the tabloids, I get a knot in my stomach. It’s just not me — it’s reading something that’s not real.”
Read on to learn more about Kathleen Alexander “Kick” Kennedy.
She is one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s six children
Robert F. Kennedy Jr and his ex-wife, Emily Ruth Black, welcomed Kick Kennedy in 1988. They also share a son, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy III, in 1984.
Kick Kennedy also has four half-siblings from her father’s subsequent marriage to Mary Richardson: Conor Richardson Kennedy, 30, Kyra LeMoyne Kennedy, 29, William Finbar Kennedy, 26, and Aidan Caohman Vieques Kennedy, 23.
She’s named after another famous Kennedy
Kennedy shares a nickname with another notable member of the Kennedy family — her father’s aunt, Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington, who was a sister of President John F. Kennedy and who also went by “Kick.”
The late Kick Kennedy married William Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington, in 1938. He was killed in combat just months after their wedding in 1944, and she died four years later in a plane crash at just 28.
The younger Kick Kennedy paid tribute to her great-aunt on Instagram in 2016, sharing a photo from a visit to her grave.
“Visiting the gravesite of my great aunt and namesake, Kick Kennedy, in Edensor, England,” she wrote in the caption. “‘Joy she gave, Joy she has found.’”
While her birth name is Kathleen Alexandra Kennedy, the younger Kick says pretty much everyone calls her by her nickname.
“(No one) calls me Kathleen except the TSA and the Department of Motor Vehicles,” she told the New York Post in 2014.
She shared a memorable anecdote about her dad involving a dead whale
While she doesn’t often discuss her father in public, Kennedy did once share a colorful childhood memory involving her dad, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In a 2012 Town & Country interview that has recently been making the rounds again online, Kennedy shared that when she was 6 years old, her father heard that a dead whale had washed up in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, the site of the Kennedy compound.
She said her dad, who was interested in studying animal anatomy, cut the dead whale’s head off with a chainsaw and strapped it to the roof of the family car. They then drove five hours to Mount Kisco, New York.
“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” she said. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”
Kennedy has followed in her dad’s footsteps when it comes to environmental activism, particularly around water conservation issues. In 2006, she and her dad took a rafting trip together along the Colorado River, a journey featured in the IMAX film “Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk 3D.”
“We’re always doing things like conserving light bulbs, and of course we get castigated if we litter,” Kick Kennedy told Stanford Magazine in 2008 about growing up in an environmentally conscious family. “But the impact has been more in our love for nature. My dad has spent his whole fatherhood forcing us outdoors and not letting us come back in.”
She has appeared in shows including ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘The Newsroom’
Kennedy has appeared in a handful of movies and TV shows over the years, including episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Newsroom,” and the movies “Teacher of the Year and “Fear and Loathing in Aspen,” according to her IMDB profile.
She also appeared as herself in a 2010 episode of “Gossip Girl.”
Kennedy, who has also worked as a model, made her off-Broadway debut in 2014, starring in a modern retelling of Sophocles’ “Antigone.”
“I’m really lucky,” Kennedy told the Associated Press in 2014 while rehearsing for the play. “I’ve grown a lot just studying this part and I hope I can do it justice. I couldn’t really ask for a better story to tell right now. It’s just sort of magical that everything fell into place.”
Kennedy also opened up to the AP about her lifelong love of acting, revealing that growing up, she put on plays with Annie Starke, the daughter of Glenn Close. She also acted during her time at Stanford University.
“It’s just been the funniest thing for me throughout my whole life,” she said. “Here I am and I’m giving it a go. It seems to be the thing that I like doing and people tell me I’m kind of good at.”
She added that she was eager to prove herself as an actor, regardless of her famous surname.
“Hopefully one day people will come see me for something that doesn’t have to do with my last name,” she said. “For me, it’s just two different things. This is a job. That is my life.”
She has spoken sparingly about her romantic relationships
Kennedy was previously linked to Matthew Mellon, a banking heir who died in 2018 while traveling to a drug rehabilitation facility in Cancun, Mexico.
He and Kennedy had been reportedly dating for four months prior to his death, according to People.
“She is heartbroken, shocked, she didn’t see this coming,” Kennedy’s modeling manager, Christine Schott, told People in 2018. “She is devastated and will not be making comment.”
A few years prior, Kennedy dated musician Harper Simon, the son of singer-songwriter Paul Simon.
Kennedy opened up about the experience of bringing Simon to meet her family, including her late grandmother, Ethel Kennedy, who was one of President Kennedy’s sisters.
“Harper came to the Cape,” she told the New York Post in 2014. “He’s a very charming guy, and he sang for my grandmother, which she loved — and then he was ordered to sing every night after that, which he didn’t love. My grandmother likes performance and music, and she sometimes demands it. And you can’t really say no to Ethel, so I made sure he brought his guitar.”
Her half-brother dated Taylor Swift
Kennedy’s half-brother, Conor Kennedy, briefly dated Taylor Swift in 2012.
Conor Kennedy, 30, is the eldest son of Kick Kennedy’s dad and his late ex-wife, Mary Richardson.
Kick Kennedy shared some kind words about Swift’s music in her 2012 Town & Country interview.
“Taylor’s sweet, and so catchy I can’t believe it. I can’t get her songs out of my head,” she said.
“Yeah, she’s really sweet,” she later told the New York Post in 2014, reflecting on Swift’s presence at the Kennedy compound while she and her half-brother were dating.
“It was a moment, really," Kennedy continued. "But we always have exciting things going on — exciting people to meet.”
She has opened up about finding her identity beyond her famous family
Kennedy reflected on her relationship with the Kennedy name in her 2012 Town & Country interview.
She said growing up in such a notable family left her wary of fame.
“I was born with a sticker — a name — that has made me totally uninterested in the fame factor of success,” she said. “I see all my actor friends really going for it in that way because it’s such a big part of the job, but it kind of turns me off. I’m frightened of it, or at least uninterested, unamused.”
While she has chosen not to pursue a career in politics, unlike many of her relatives, Kennedy has said she sees links between the worlds of politics and acting.
“Everyone thinks it’s so crazy and I’m such a tangent from this tree, but I see it all kind of relating, personally,” she told the AP in 2014.
“I mean, if you break down what a lot of politics is you get stage presence, charisma and, more importantly, a search for truth and the desire to serve a common good, which I believe theater does.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
