John F. Kennedy Jr.

1960-1999

Latest News: American Love Story to Explore JFK Jr.’s Marriage to Carolyn Bessette Kennedy

John F. Kennedy’s marriage to fashion publicist Carolyn Bessette Kennedy is the focus of Ryan Murphy’s upcoming series American Love Story. The highly anticipated show will explore the iconic couple’s short-lived romance, which reportedly had many ups and downs.

Kennedy and his wife were married for only three years before their untimely deaths in a tragic plane crash in 1999. The media’s interest in their relationship took a toll on the couple, and at the time of their deaths, they were living in separate residences.

Actor Paul Kelly will play Kennedy—a lawyer, magazine publisher, and the son of President John F. Kennedy—in the series, while Bessette Kennedy will be portrayed by Sarah Pidgeon. In addition to the newcomers, well-known British actor Naomi Watts has been tapped to play Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

American Love Story is set to premiere on FX in February 2026, during the week of Valentine’s Day. The show, which is still in production, does not yet have an official release date.

John F. Kennedy Jr. was a lawyer, journalist, and publisher of the monthly political magazine George. He was the only son of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Spending his early years living in the White House, Kennedy grew up in the spotlight, captivating the public eye with his charisma and good looks. He found success in publishing, but Kennedy’s life was cut short when the plane he was flying crashed into the Long Island Sound off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. His wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and sister-in-law also died in the accident.

FULL NAME: John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr.
BORN: November 25, 1960
DIED: July 16, 1999
BIRTHPLACE: Washington, D.C.
SPOUSE: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (1996-1999)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was born on November 25, 1960, in Washington, D.C. to John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (later Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis). The first child born to a president-elect, he lived in the White House as a child with his older sister, Caroline Kennedy. The subject of much media attention, the infant quickly became known to the public as “John-John” after a reporter heard his father call out his name twice and mistook it as a nickname. Just a few years after his birth, his father, President Kennedy, was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The state funeral was held on young John’s third birthday. He won America’s hearts in the much-photographed moment he bravely saluted his father’s casket. This seemingly solidified his image as the heir apparent to his father, and the public soon began projecting the aspirations of his father onto him.

After leaving the White House, Kennedy’s family briefly moved to the Georgetown area of Washington D.C. before eventually relocating to Manhattan, New York, where he attended private schools St. David’s School and Collegiate School. In 1968, his mother remarried Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, with whom Kennedy had a complex relationship, and the family spent their summers at Onassis’ private Greek island, Skorpios. In 1972, an 11-year-old Kennedy was the target of a kidnapping plot that supposed to take place on Skorpios, but was successfully thwarted by the FBI. Three years later, in 1975, Onassis died of pneumonia, leaving Jaqueline a widow once again. Kennedy continued his high school education at the boarding school Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, during which time his secret service protection ended at age 16.

After graduating high school in 1979, he enrolled at Brown University, where he majored in American Studies. His mother reportedly filled out his college application for him while he was on a trip to Kenya. At Brown, Kennedy played rugby, joined the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi, and acted in several student productions. Throughout his college tenure, he appeared in such plays as Volpone and Shakespeare’s The Tempest and even landed leading roles in The Playboy of the Western World and In the Boom Boom Room. While Kennedy initially struggled academically, he eventually turned into a B+ student and took an interest in campus activism. After visiting South Africa, he co-founded a student group during his sophomore year that advocated for Brown to divest from South Africa until apartheid was abolished, using his connections to bring influential speakers to campus.

Informally referred to as “America’s Prince,” Kennedy struggled to find his footing away from the expectations that came with being born into political royalty. He certainly could have had a future in politics, but he shied away from the political arena, choosing instead to make his own way in the world. Following his graduation from Brown in 1983, he embarked on a soul-searching trip to India, where he also studied at the University of Delhi for three months. While Kennedy was interested in pursuing acting, his mother discouraged him from taking that career path. Long after his college theater days, however, he would eventually make his film debut in 1990’s A Matter of Degrees. In 1984, Kennedy took a job at the New York City Office of Business Development, where he worked for four years. During this time, he entered law school at his mother’s urging, earning his law degree from New York University Law School of Law in 1989.

Soon after graduating from law school, Kennedy started working as an assistant district attorney at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. While he was able to help work on some cases, he couldn’t prosecute them in court until he passed the New York bar exam. After failing the bar twice, the press ran with the news of his exam results, labeling him as “the hunk that flunks.”

With his job on line, Kennedy was determined to take the test again. He told reporters at the time: “I am very disappointed again. God willing, I will be back to take them in July. I am clearly not a legal genius.” Sure enough, Kennedy passed on the third try. In August 1991, he won his first case as a prosecutor. Despite his hard work and success, Kennedy resigned from his position two years later in July 1993.

In an interview with Vogue that year, he revealed he considered running for office, but decided against it. “Once you run for office, you’re in it,” he said. “Sort of like going into the military you’d better be damn sure that it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life.”

Leaving his legal career behind entirely, Kennedy pivoted to journalism. After experiencing his first foray into the profession when he published an essay in the New York Times about a kayaking trip in Scandinavia in 1992, he set out to start his own magazine. Kennedy pitched the idea to his friend, Michael J. Berman, and the two men took a seminar called “Starting Your Own Magazine” to learn more about the magazine business. Kennedy also consulted former magazine editor Clay Felker for further guidance. What followed was a publication like no other.

In 1995, Kennedy and Berman founded the nonpartisan political magazine George. The publication was aptly named after President George Washington, who had no political party affiliation. Kennedy, who served as editor-in-chief, launched the magazine at a news conference that September at Manhattan’s Federal Hall—where Washington was inaugurated. In unveiling the cover of George’s first issue, which featured Cindy Crawford dressed as the first president, he said, “People have to be entertained to want to buy a political magazine, and hopefully it will get them interested in politics.”

Focusing on the intersection of politics and pop culture, George had no specific political direction, employing a wide variety of contributors, including Ann Coulter, Marla Maples, and journalist Lisa DePaulo. The monthly magazine also had no shortage of notable cover stars, featuring celebrities like Robert De Niro, George Clooney, Barbara Streisand, Rob Lowe, and Drew Barrymore.

George was initially a success, selling nearly 500,000 copies of its first issue. While the magazine helped Kennedy forge his own identity, it also reportedly made him start to seriously consider entering the realm of politics himself. But when buzz around George eventually died down, the publication began struggling to make money. In June 1999, Kennedy was informed that George’s publisher Hachette intended to shutter the magazine.

When Kennedy tragically died only a month later, however, Hachette decided not to pull the plug just yet and kept it running for another 18 months under the helm of its new head editor, Frank Lalli. George published its final issue in January 2001.

With looks inherited from his attractive parents, Kennedy, despite strict protection from his mother, was in the spotlight his entire life as one of journalists’ favorite subjects. He had been romantically linked with numerous Hollywood celebrities, including Madonna, Julia Roberts, and Sarah Jessica Parker, and was named People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1988, becoming the youngest recipient of the title at just 27 years old. That same year, began dating actor Daryl Hannah. The two had a high profile on-again-off-again relationship that lasted five years.

In 1994, Kennedy and Hannah officially broke up, and he started dating fashion publicist Carolyn Bessette. The pair had met two years earlier at a Calvin Klein fitting. His mother died before Bessette got the chance to meet her. Kennedy proposed the following year, and in September 1996, they got married in a secret ceremony on Georgia’s Cumberland Island. The two shared a loft apartment in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood, where Kennedy was often seen rollerblading and biking on the city’s streets.

Long after their wedding, the couple was still regularly swarmed by the media. Carolyn struggled with the constant attention from the press, which reportedly affected their marriage. While John wanted children, Carolyn had changed her mind, no longer wanting to bring kids into the world when they were being always being watched. By 1999, the two were reportedly living in separate residences. While dealing with his marital woes, John was also coping with his friend Anthony Radziwill's fatal cancer diagnosis.

Alarmed by the state of their relationship, Carolyn’s sister, Lauren Bessette, organized a lunch that July to help the couple reconcile. She encouraged them to attend Rory Kennedy's upcoming wedding together and even offered to accompany them. Before John and Carolyn could even get the chance to resolve their issues, however, they were killed in a tragic accident just days later.

On July 16, 1999, Kennedy, Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law, Lauren, were flying to Martha's Vineyard on a single-engine private plane piloted by Kennedy. The three of them were en route to his cousin’s wedding in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, but when their plane did not arrive as scheduled, massive search parties were sent out to locate the aircraft. Search efforts persisted throughout the following days, initially to no avail. Luggage and debris from the wreckage were found washed ashore the Gay Head section of Martha’s Vineyard, and the three passengers were eventually presumed dead.

Across the nation, Americans mourned the loss of the beloved son of one of the country’s most admired families and shared their sadness in the tragedies that seem to haunt them. On July 21, search crews recovered the bodies of Kennedy, his wife, and sister-in-law. The Kennedy and Bessette families planned a burial at sea for all three. A private mass for Kennedy and his wife was also held at the Church of St. Thomas More on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where his mother had previously worshipped; it was attended by President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.

Kennedy, who was 38 years old, was survived by his uncle, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, and his sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, as well as a number of cousins, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Since his death, Kennedy’s life has been the subject of several movies, books, and even TV shows. Just a year after the tragic plane crash, author Christopher Anderson published the biography The Day John Died, which chronicled Kennedy’s entire life. In 2003, TBS aired the television movie America’s Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story, based on Anderson’s book, in which Kennedy was portrayed by actor Kristoffer Paloha. More than a decade later, Paloha hosted the 2016 documentary I Am JFK Jr., featuring interviews with Kennedy’s famous friends.

In 2019, the A&E documentary special John F. Kennedy Jr.: The Death of an American Prince aired on the 20th anniversary of Kennedy’s death. Based on the 2019 Steven M. Gillon’s book, America’s Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr., the film included convincing evidence regarding his political aspirations before his untimely death and shed light on the final year of his life.

Watch "John F. Kennedy Jr.: The Death of an American Prince" on HISTORY Vault

Kennedy’s life and tragic end was revisited more recently in the CNN docuseries American Prince: JFK Jr., which premiered in August 2025. A fictional retelling of his marriage to Carolyn Bessette Kennedy will be the focus of the upcoming Ryan Murphy series American Love Story, set to arrive on FX in February 2026.

• People often tell me I could be a great man. I’d rather be a good man.
• It's hard for me to talk about a legacy or a mystique. It's my family. It’s my mother. It’s my sister. It’s my father. We’re a family like any other. We look out for one another. The fact that there have been difficulties and hardships, or obstacles, makes us closer.
  
• On George Magazine: People have to be entertained to want to buy a political magazine, and hopefully it will get them interested in politics.
  
• I know, a Kennedy starting a nonpartisan magazine is like Mark Fuhrman addressing an NAACP convention.
  
• Once you run for office, you’re in it. Sort of like going into the military you’d better be damn sure that it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life.
  

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