The Kerry Daughters Revealed



Harper's Bazaar, Sept 2004, By Ben Affleck

Senator John Kerry's daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa, let down their guard and speak candidly to the actor and political campaigner about their stepmother, Teresa Heinz Kerry, the infamous dress incident at the Cannes Film Festival and the extraordinary ways their father stands by them.

     “Which one of you two did I have an affair with? Was it you or your sister?" Alexandra Kerry pauses for a moment. "I think it was Vanessa. Yes, it was. You and Vanessa had a long and passionate affair." It still doesn't ring a bell, so I ask for details: "Was I a good boyfriend?" I can hear Alex smile over the phone. "I don't know-you'll have to ask Vanessa."

     The first thing you notice when talking to Alex and Vanessa Kerry is that they haven't lost their sense of humor, even when dealing with completely fictitious (and in the case of Vanessa and me, I'd have to say libelous to her) tabloid stories about their love lives. The truth is, I only met the women early this year while volunteering for their father's campaign. They seem to accept that when your father becomes the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, your life changes a little bit. I've admired how deftly they've handled this pressure and wondered how they've been able to integrate themselves so gracefully into their father's campaign without sacrificing their integrity or privacy.

     Alex, 30, is the older sister; Vanessa is three years her junior. Alex went to Brown University; Vanessa went to Yale. Alex has soft features, brown hair and a gentle, willowy carriage that complements her demeanor. Vanessa is fierce, focused and sharp. Maybe she had to fight off fears of being seen as the "dumb blonde" in the family, since she looks, with her flaxen hair, almost like a Nordic milkman's child. If you spend any time with her, however, you can see her father in her eyes and raised cheekbones and in the steady, thoughtful, caring way she sees each topic of our conversation through to its conclusion.

     Alex is a filmmaker and an actress in Los Angeles. Vanessa goes to Harvard Medical School in Boston. The two of them are so absurdly beautiful, well-spoken and intelligent and such phenomenal achievers that if you didn't know them, they might come off as the too-perfect prep-school girls who are invariably the villains in John Hughes movies. The exact opposite is true. They are funny, open and completely down-to-earth. They recognize the overachievement in their respective resumes, but their easy laughter tells you not to worry. These two seem never to have looked down on anyone in their lives.

     Vanessa objects to my reductive characterization of her as the "scientist" and her sister as the "artist": "My sister is extremely academic and smart, and I've now stopped telling people I go to medical school, because their eyes tend to glaze over and they walk away...." It's obvious that humility and self-deprecation are trademarks of the Kerry family. Getting them to say anything nice about themselves is next to impossible.

     Both young women seem to value emotional honesty in their own lives and are uncomfortable with anything less on the campaign trail. I was struck that their family appearances never seem cardboard or staged-a pitfall so many candidates seem unable to avoid. Vanessa suggests, "I think it's our nature. When you talk about staged events, that is just so the antithesis of my father. My father hates contrived, and he's a very genuine, real guy. Sometimes people in the campaign have made suggestions like `We think it would be great if So-and-so flew into his arms when she got off the airplane,' and I'm thinking, There is no way this is going to happen, and my father is the first person to vocalize that."


     When I ask Alex if she is afraid of the inevitable nastiness of a heated campaign, she says she has bigger fears. "The thing that's scary, as the negativity of a campaign increases, is that some part of your skin becomes really thick and it doesn't affect you-which is actually more frightening to me: that I would somehow become so inured to it that I went completely numb." Alex already experienced some of this ugliness when she was pilloried by Republican websites for a dress she wore at the Cannes Film Festival in May. "Yeah, the dress was completely see-through. Not intentionally, mind you. I wore a very conservative dress that did not withstand the impact of 3500 flashbulbs.... Because of the dark world of the Internet, I'm told there are now entire Web pages dedicated to my breasts. So, that was cool," she deadpans. "You gotta love the Internet."

     These two smart, self-assured women didn't emerge on their own from the primordial ooze. They must have had some pretty good parenting. Their parents were separated in 1982 and divorced in 1988, and I ask what effect this had on their childhood. Interestingly, both women remark that the split may have made their parents better parents. Alex says, "If Dad had been in the house all the time, if they had stayed married, he might have taken things for granted. Instead, he worked so hard to be there for us and to get to know us and to be part of our lives, because it was important to him." Vanessa responds similarly and adds, "There are things I can talk to my father about that other people, friends of mine, wouldn't be able to touch in conversation with their mother with a 10-foot pole."

     I am a little surprised that she could have been that comfortable, birds-and bees-wise, with such a distinguished, hard-nosed war-hero guy for a father. "Was John Kerry really the kind of father you could tell anything to?" Vanessa laughs. "Absolutely. I still laugh about his attempts during my teenage years to run through some of the fundamental discussions you're supposed to have with a child and seeing some of the different shades of red he would go through. But I loved him for it. That took a lot of guts! I think that his ability to share that stuff with us says a lot about who he is. It wasn't like we couldn't get in trouble. He set limits, and when you pushed them-came home late at night, maybe way too late-he would get really angry, but he would also be reasonable. He would talk us through why it mattered that he knew where we were and who we were with. He was never judgmental. He was always open and engaged and tolerant. The closeness that he really earned when we were younger is still there, too. I broke up with a boyfriend a while ago, and I came home sobbing pathetically and Dad was so sweet. He just put his arms around me and held me and told me, `It's okay. I know it's hard and it's rough now, but you will get past it and there will be someone else and blah, blah, blah.' And I thought, It’s pretty cool that my dad can sit here and do this."

     I wonder what their opinion is of their stepmother, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and her relationship with their father. "I think Teresa is really smart and she's very compassionate, and that works well with my dad," says Alex. "He respects women. He has two sisters and two daughters, so he's used to, in a sense, being challenged by them because we didn't let him off the hook very often...."

     I tell the sisters I can remember a conversation I had with some higher-ups in the Democratic Parry after the 2000 election. I said I thought Kerry was the presumptive nominee in '04 and that he was clearly the strongest candidate. They "informed" me in a very conspiratorial manner that Senator Kerry's wife was a "loose cannon" and she had a "foreign accent" and was his "Achilles' heel." I tell both sisters that one of the things I respect about John Kerry is how he seems to have embraced Teresa in the campaign. Rather than try to muzzle her or transform her into a Stepford campaign wife, he makes her a true partner. Every time I've seen him, either publicly or backstage, he has been solicitous of her involvement, often imploring her to speak. Alex stops me before I ramble too long. "It's true. It's strange to me that we are still living in a world that would support someone being silent. She is outspoken and very intelligent, and she is well studied in the environment and languages and other cultures. It just seems strange that anyone would say something negative about her. It's the same thing with my dad; he is someone who's been criticized because he understands other cultures.... It amazes me. And with Teresa, he just feels like this is somebody who has something to say and he wants her to say it, and he believes people will respond to that."


     Vanessa seems to feel almost more strongly than her sister about her father and his second wife. "They have an unbelievable partnership, and I've seen that since they first got together. She's very smart, very passionate and very kind. I think those are attributes Dad really appreciates and admires in her." I wonder if there was any divorce tension or any new-stepmom angst when her dad remarried. Vanessa offers, "Dad and Teresa got married the summer before I went to college [1995]. And my mom is also with someone new, and to see your parents break up ... then see them be so in love with their significant others now is really nice."

     Vanessa also doesn't fail to include her mother (Julia Thorne, a writer, now living in Montana) in discussions of family, and it seems important to her that her mom get a fair share of credit. "My mother is one of the most lively, luminescent women I know," says Vanessa. "She's amazing and she's wonderful."

     Alex concurs. "I always think about my mom because she is very private and tends to get the shaft for nor being able to speak for herself. She is exceptionally cool, incredibly generous, present and very loving. People in the press are always trying to make our parents' divorce out to be some kind of great dramatic climax in their lives, and it really wasn't. The marriage didn't work, and they both handled it really, really well. They're both wonderful people."

     I wonder if Mom doesn't feel strange seeing her daughters in this new spotlight, particularly in the capacity of trying to elect her ex-husband president. "It's been very strange for her because she spent so much time investing in our privacy and giving us a safe haven," explains Vanessa. "She thinks it's a mixed blessing because there we are on C-SPAN talking about all this crazy stuff, and on the other hand we're getting accosted by crazy people and she's worried: Are we safe, are we healthy, are we protected?"

     What kind of crazy people? "Oh, nothing really. Yesterday, I was in an ice cream store and this woman comes up to me acting strange and tells me she wants to give me a kiss, and I think, This cannot be happening... ” How do you handle that? "I think you keep your faith and your sense of humor, and everything will turn out okay," says Vanessa.

     Getting back to the subject of their mother, I wonder what her unique take on her ex-husband's run for president is. Vanessa: "My mother is very distressed about the direction this country has been heading in for the last three years, and she's a huge supporter of my father's and really believes he would make an excellent president." Well, there you have it.

     The campaign, for all intents and purposes, is really just warming up, though both women view it with some trepidation for the sake of their privacy and sanity, neither seems conflicted about its importance or the need for them to take part. Alex says, "It's a gathering storm for us out there on the horizon. Already, so much has been fabricated about us and printed, and I have tried to protect the people I care about from that. There isn't a lot you can do to protect yourself."

     Adds Vanessa, "It's a huge adjustment, and I am just now starting to understand what it means and how it might limit me. The thing I hold fast to is that there is one truth, and the minute you start letting other people's opinions dictate your behavior, I think you're screwed. If you live by that and don't start drifting, you can maintain your integrity, even through a process like this.... Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'd rather have my father be president of the United States and lose my anonymity ... than have this country continue on the road we've been taken down over the last three years. It's a trade-off, and it's one I'm willing to make.... There are moments that are amazing and moments, like the ice cream store incident [laughs], when I can't believe what is happening to me. On balance, though, it's definitely worth it. I am one person, and this election is much more important than that. It's about the entire country."

     I am struck by these two impressive women. They are smart without seeming haughty or superior. They maintain a strong moral compass without becoming sanctimonious or judgmental. They have great poise and a wealth of experience but seem not to have lost their affinity for people from all walks of life. They understand that public service involves sacrifice, and they perform it for the good they want to do in the world rather than any desire for self-aggrandizement. They are proud and principled but couple it with humor and humility. They believe the country can be led with courage rather than fear, in the principles of fairness and equal opportunity, and that the leadership of their country should work to benefit and protect all its citizens. When I ask how they came to be this way and feel the way they do, they have one answer: It runs in the family.