Actress Daryl Hannah has unwillingly found her name thrust into the spotlight again thanks to a new—and, in her own words, “untrue”—portrayal of her romance with John F. Kennedy Jr. in showrunner Ryan Murphy‘s new FX series, “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.”
The series, which stars Paul Kelly as Kennedy and Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette, centers on the ill-fated romance between the political scion and the fashion publicist, yet it is the show’s depiction of Hannah, portrayed by actress Dree Hemingway, that has arguably drawn the most attention.
So much so that Hannah, 65, who has largely withdrawn from the spotlight in recent years, felt compelled to pen an essay about the series, blasting it as “tragedy-exploiting” and “appalling.”
“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,” she wrote in a New York Times opinion piece. “The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue.
“It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show. These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct—and they are false.”
Hannah, who married musician Neil Young in 2018 and now splits her time between his remote cabin retreat in Ontario, Canada, and her own eco-friendly ranch in Colorado, revealed that the series has turned her into a very real-life villain for some viewers, claiming that she has “received many hostile and even threatening messages” from “Love Story” fans who believe her portrayal to be “factual.”
At the time of her romance with Kennedy, who was living in New York City at the time, Hannah had been in the public eye for years—having shot to fame in the 1982 movie “Blade Runner,” before going on to find further stardom in “Splash,” which was released in 1984.
However, for years now, the on-screen starlet has all but turned her entire focus to projects behind the camera, noting in her New York Times essay: “For decades, my work has focused on environmental advocacy, documentary filmmaking and animal-assisted therapy for seniors living with dementia and Alzheimer’s.”
Indeed, Hannah has essentially eschewed all vestiges of her former life as an A-list starlet—moving away from California to live fulltime on a sprawling Colorado ranch she has owned for decades.
Today, the activist still largely resides on the property, which is located in the Rocky Mountains and even served as the inspiration for one of Young’s albums, aptly-titled “Colorado,” which he released with the band Crazy Horse.
Hannah has long described the property as her personal sanctuary, revealing in a 2004 interview with InStyle that the ranch was the place where she retreated when she needed to get away from the craziness of her on-screen career.
“I travel a lot for work, stay in big cities, and have a hectic schedule. Coming home to a place like this definitely grounds me and helps me put things into perspective,” she shared, adding that she first came across the 1,000-acre spread in the early 1990s, when a friend alerted her that the land was available to buy.
Bowled over by the natural beauty of the land, which is filled with wildflowers, unspoiled meadows, and fruit groves, Hannah was left horrified to learn that the land had been earmarked for development—a revelation that made her even more determined to purchase as much of the property as she could.
“I’d never seen anything like it,” she recalled. “It was like the poppy field in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ When I discovered it was going to be broken up in to small parcels and destroyed for redevelopment, I bought as much as I could afford to save as a refuge for all the wildlife.”
Hannah noted that the dwelling was incredibly run down when she bought it, revealing that she slept in teepees on the land for several years while work on her homestead was completed.
After purchasing the sprawling property, Hannah continued to split her time between the ranch and her eco-friendly home in Malibu, CA, which she purchased in two separate transactions for a combined $1.32 million in June 2001.
However, after she found herself spending more and more time in Colorado, she put that dwelling—which encompasses two adjacent parcels—on the market for just under $5 million in 2012, ultimately selling it to her then-partner Young for $3.6 million in 2016, two years before they tied the knot.
But in 2018, disaster struck when the dwelling was destroyed by the Woolsey Fire, prompting Young to issue a scathing takedown of President Donald Trump, who blamed the blaze on poor forest management.
“California is vulnerable—not because of poor forest management, as DT (our so-called president) would have us think,” he wrote on his website, Neil Young Archives. “We are vulnerable because of Climate Change; the extreme weather events and our extended drought is part of it.”
While Young still owns the property, the fire—coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic two years later—seem to have pushed him and Hannah to quit California almost entirely, taking up residence at the actress’ Colorado property, while also spending time at a rustic retreat near the singer’s hometown in Canada.
On his website, Young revealed how he and Hannah had restored a 1906 cottage that sits on a lake near Omemee in Ontario, where they hunkered down for six months during the pandemic.
“We winterized it, a 116-year-old wooden beauty and we stayed almost six months there in Canada near my hometown, where I first had started to go to school,” he shared.
An insider told Life & Style in 2025 that Hannah loved the remote location of the Canadian property, where she feels she can really settle in and focus on her passions, saying: “Daryl doesn’t go into a lot of detail about what exactly she went through during her time in Hollywood, but she has said that some of her experiences were gnarly enough that she gets anxiety whenever she sees trailers set up for a movie set.
“She loves the peace and quiet they have where they live, they’re really able to focus on their art. Neil is still making music, she’s working on another movie about him, which she loves doing, moving far away from L.A. has brought her a lot of peace.”
The couple used their renovation experience at their Canadian dwelling for another passion project in 2021, when they rebuilt an 1850s log barn on their Colorado property in order to use it as a recording studio for the Crazy Horse album, “Barn.”
“We got some people to restore it back to the original greatness, with ponderosa pines, it’s just beautiful, just a beautiful building,” Young told the Associated Press. “I felt like it was going to be a great place to make music.”
Hannah filmed the process of the band recording the record, eventually turning it into a Grammy-nominated music documentary.
According to Hannah’s Instagram, she has not left California altogether, however, with images posted on her account capturing the actress in and around her and Young’s Malibu compound, where she keeps several rescue horses.
It appears that the duo spend much of their time traveling between their homes in the Golden State and Colorado, where Hannah has a host of different animals, including alpacas.
