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Mariel’s Way
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Mariel Hemingway reaches for the stars with yoga, healthy eating and more
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By Margaret Jaworski
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MediZine's Healthy Living Spring 2009
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For most of her 30-plus years in showbiz, Mariel Hemingway’s reputation as a health nut netted her more ribbing than respect. “I was teased a lot,” she says. But these days, those who used to gently mock her for striking Sun Salutation yoga poses in between scenes or bringing whey protein powder to the catering table are now taking the 7-year-old mother of two aside to ask her just how she manages to maintain her serenity, stamina and strikingly youthful appearance. In fact, since her 2007 book, Healthy Living from the Inside Out, Mariel has become better known as an expert of and advocate for healthy and holistic living than as an Oscar- and Golden Globe–nominated actor.
But she is no fanatic. In fact, Mariel’s approach to wellness is refreshingly pragmatic and easygoing. “You have to make changes in small, achievable increments,” she says. “You can’t overhaul your lifestyle in a day.”
She also frowns on deprivation and denial. Positive changes only stick, she believes, if those changes make you feel better physically or psychologically. For example, if you recognize that lowering your sugar intake also reduces irritability and moodiness or lessens that afternoon energy slump, you’ll have a real incentive to pass up that candy bar the next time a craving strikes.
Carving out time for yourself is crucial, says Mariel, who usually rises at 5:30 a.m. for yoga—a discipline she’s practiced faithfully for more than 20 years. And little wonder she has stuck by yoga for so long: Along with meditation, it helped her find inner peace after her tumultuous childhood and adolescence.
Mariel Hadley Hemingway grew up in Ketchum, ID, a few miles upstream from the cabin where her grandfather, famed writer Ernest Hemingway, had lived. Sadly, Mariel never met him. He died by his own hand four months before she was born—the fourth suicide in his immediate family.
In her first book, Finding My Balance, Mariel wrote eloquently about the Hemingway family curse.
“Was it a genetic predisposition to depression and alcoholism, or an unhealthy family environment that produced disastrous emotional habits?... Continued tragedies in succeeding generations of our family [her oldest sister, Joan, suffered from a debilitating mental illness; her other sister, Margaux, committed suicide] have left me coping with a full slate of problems and fears every day in my life. Finding my own answers has come to seem like a matter of survival.”
Getting her emotional footing took time. At 13, in between nursing her mother—who’d been diagnosed with cancer—and coping with her sister’s mental illness, Mariel took on a role with Margaux in Lipstick. The film opened in 1976, and Mariel received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year. At the age of 17, she starred in Manhattan and received an Academy Award nomination in 1980 for Best Supporting Actress. She was later nominated for another Golden Globe, for the TV series Civil Wars.
In 1984, at age 23, Mariel took a big step toward stability with her marriage to documentary filmmaker Stephen Crisman. The couple have
two daughters: Dree, born in 1987, and Langley, born in 1989.
But in late 2000, shortly after Mariel’s father, Jack, died from complications of surgery, Stephen was diagnosed with stage IV melanoma. He won that battle, but four and a half years later, cancer returned, this time in his liver and colon. He beat it again and is now in remission.
Mariel, a spokesperson for the food-based supplement Healthy Curb, firmly believes that a healthy diet, exercise program and living environment helped her husband recover. And today, she says, although the couple has dealt with many challenges and tragedies, their happiness springs from “being grateful for the gifts we have been given. That makes us laugh at many of the disappointments that have come up in our lives.”
What does this healthy celebrity like to snack on during the day?
Jasmine green tea, fresh berries, organic apples, carrots, beets,
avocados, celery and raw or dry roasted nuts, as well as sunflower and
pumpkin seeds.
And Blisscuits, Mariel’s very own tasty and good-for-you creation.
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