American actress with a lanky 5’10 build, great long legs and flowing blonde hair. She made a strong screen presence in her role as Madison the Mermaid in Ron Howard’s “Splash” in 1984. Hannah’s success in “Splash” was followed by romantic lead roles in “Roxanne,” 1987, “Wall Street,” 1987, and “Steel Magnolias” in 1989. In the early ’90s, Hannah put her career on hold in order to attend to her personal life. She appeared a front-runner, close to becoming Mrs. John F. Kennedy, Jr. as they appeared often in photographs, seen in public together.
Hannah grew up in Chicago a shy, bashful girl. From an early age, she played with invisible friends and thrived in her dream world. At seven, her parents divorced shattering her sense of security and well-being. The young girl withdrew tighter into her fantasies and worried about the financial obligations of her younger brother Dan and little sister Page. She suffered insomnia and stayed up late watching late night movies. Awkward in school, the kids nicknamed her “Broomstick” as she walked down the school halls in a down jacket to conceal her body. When she was 13, her mother Sue married wealthy Chicago industrialist, Jerry Wexler, the chairman of Jupiter Industries. She was enrolled into the Francis W. Parker School of Theater and Dramatics in Chicago during her high school years. At 17, she left her family to enroll in the drama department of the University of Southern California. To the horror of her mother, she quit school in order to break into the film industry. The sheltered, inexperienced girl was determined to become a professional film actress in Los Angeles. In 1980, she found an agent and appeared in a few films before she gained notoriety as a mermaid with Tom Hanks in 1984’s hit, “Splash.”
From that time, her career moved forward in excellent roles. Though she was delivering fine performances, Hannah avoided from screen nudity. Her rather modest but semi-nude scenes in “Splash” made her uncomfortable she wore three pairs of black panties when asked to appear in skivvies in front of the camera on another shoot. The modest actress also worries about embarrassing her immediate family with make-believe sex scenes.
Hannah acknowledges that her introspective fantasy world played a part in her dateless years in high school. She had little experience with relationships until she dated rock and roll singer, Jackson Browne in 1982. She met Browne in high school but did not see him romantically until he divorced his second wife. Their ten year relationship ended in a violent confrontation in the Santa Monica home that they shared on 9/23/1992 around 12:03 PM when LA police were called to the scene. Hannah suffered a broken finger, black eye, body bruises and a swollen lip. She refused to press charges against the singer while he made claims to the press that he did not hurt her.
She met John F. Kennedy, Jr., at the 1988 wedding reception of his aunt, Lee Radziwill and her former film director, Herb Ross. The following year the couple began to see each other and soon Hannah sidelined her career in order to be with the handsome son of JFK. After a close brush with the wedding altar, Hannah and Kennedy broke up in 1994.
In 1992, she was devastated by the death of her stepfather Jerry Wexler.
Hannah owns homes in Los Angeles and Manhattan, but prefers her Colorado retreat near Telluride. An outdoorswoman, her clothing of choice is slim jeans, leather workman’s boots and baseball caps. She is not attached to creature comforts and is proud of her rustic lifestyle of splitting logs and eating nuts and berries. She still loves her fantasy world and at times she “spaces out” into her dream world. She loves the magical qualities of her fantasies and feels unhappy when she crashes back into cold reality.
In 1998, she starred in ABC’s remake of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” with quadriplegic star, Christopher Reeve.
Link to Wikipedia biography