From Natalie to Minka, Katie, and Jeanne: 11 Actors Who Have Played Jackie Kennedy Onscreen
We’ve now finally learned who will be joining Sarah Pidgeon’s Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in Ryan Murphy’s hotly anticipated forthcoming series American Love Story, dramatizing the lives, love, and (we have to presume) tragic deaths of CBK and her husband, John F. Kennedy Jr., in the 1990s. While newcomer Paul Anthony Kelly will star as the latter—a rakish attorney, magazine publisher, and all-around man-about-town—one Naomi Watts, who only recently played Babe Paley in Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, is set to go raven as John-John’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Watts would be, of course, only the latest in a long line of actors to transform into the much-admired (and much-copied) style icon: Portrayals of Jackie in film and television have stretched back more than 40 years. Here, as we await further news from Murphyland, we revisit some of the most memorable depictions of the late Jackie O. so far.
Photo: Courtesy of NBC1/11Jaclyn Smith in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (1981)
Another famous Jackie, Jaclyn Smith, starred as the famous first lady in a made-for-TV biopic that aired back in 1981.
Photo: Courtesy of NBC2/11Roma Downey in A Woman Named Jackie (1991)
Ten years later, in 1991, a three-part TV miniseries on her life premiered. It starred Roma Downey, who would later go on to appear on Touched by an Angel.
Photo: Courtesy of New Line Cinema3/11Jill Hennessy in Jackie, Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot (2001)
While most movies and shows about the Kennedys focused on the men of the political family, this miniseries, which starred Law & Order’s Jill Hennessy as Jackie, focused on the wives of Jack, Bobby, and Ted.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection4/11Jacqueline Bisset in America’s Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story (2003)
Based on Christopher Andersen’s 2000 book The Day John Died, this television film from director Eric Laneuville starred Kristoffer Polaha as the ill-fated JFK Jr. (Portia de Rossi was Carolyn Bessette) and Bisset as his mother.
As it happens, decades earlier, in 1978, Bisset also appeared in a romantic drama called The Greek Tycoon, fictionalizing the romance between Jackie and her second husband, Aristotle Onassis. While Anthony Quinn’s Ari-esque character was called Theo Tomasis, Bisset’s Jackie avatar was named Liz Cassidy.
Photo: Courtesy of HBO5/11Jeanne Tripplehorn in Grey Gardens (2009)
In HBO’s fictionalized retelling of the Maysles’s now classic documentary Grey Gardens, Jeanne Tripplehorn appears briefly as Jackie Kennedy, who was the real-life cousin of the eccentric Big and Little Edie Beale.
Photo: Courtesy of Muse Distribution International6/11Katie Holmes in The Kennedys (2011)
Katie Holmes starred as Jackie O in Reelz Channel’s controversial TV miniseries The Kennedys in 2011. Despite its historical inaccuracies, the show became a ratings hit and a sequel titled The Kennedys: After Camelot came out in 2017.
Photo: Courtesy of The Weinstein Company7/11Minka Kelly in The Butler (2013)
While Lee Daniels’s The Butler, which followed the life of White House butler Cecil Gaines, had to cover eight American presidencies, it still made time to highlight first lady Kennedy, played by Minka Kelly.
Photo: Courtesy of Scott Free Productions8/11Ginnifer Goodwin in Killing Kennedy (2013)
Once Upon a Time actor Ginnifer Goodwin donned the pink pillbox hat for a 2013 TV movie set on that fateful day in 1963 when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas.
Photo: Courtesy of Exclusive Media Group9/11Kat Steffens in Parkland (2013)
Parkland takes place in the immediate aftermath of JFK’s assassination, and Kat Steffens plays a shocked Jackie Kennedy, who refused to change out of the bloodstained pink suit she wore that day.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection10/11Natalie Portman in Jackie (2016)
The latest—and, perhaps, the greatest—portrayal of JKO came courtesy of Natalie Portman and Pablo Larraín (he, later of Spencer and Maria fame), who captured the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Jackie’s fretful attempts to control the narrative around it, in a poetic, somewhat impressionistic style.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection11/11Jodi Balfour in The Crown (2017)
In season two, episode eight of The Crown (fittingly titled “Dear Mrs. Kennedy”), Balfour’s Jackie and Michael C. Hall’s JFK visit Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy) for dinner at Buckingham Palace.
