John F Kennedy Jr. Biography

Born only weeks after his father, President John F Kennedy, was elected president, John F. Kennedy Jr. was the first infant to inhabit the White House since the 1880s.

He became famous in the eyes of the world as the three year old saluting his father’s coffin after his assassination in 1963, with the press lovingly referring to him as "John-John".

Soon after, he moved with his mother Jacqueline to Manhattan. Another blow for John was the assassination of his uncle and father-figure Robert Kennedy, when he was six years old.

Though Jackie soon became Mrs. Aristotle Onassis, her new husband played little part in his life. John attended Brown University (against the family tradition of Harvard), graduating in 1983.

Handsome, charismatic and rich, just like his parents, John considered acting, but, under his mother’s influence, he attended New York University’s Law School in the mid 1980s.

He found legal training difficult, failing his examinations twice, with the press calling him 'the hunk who flunked'.

However, in 1988, People Magazine dubbed him 'the sexiest man alive'. Around this time, he was to start dating the actress Daryl Hannah.

After introducing his other uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, to the Democratic Convention of the same year, many anticipated his own political career.

However, he became a Manhattan district attorney, scoring a 6-strong run of successes between 1989 and 1993.

He then moved into publishing, with his politics magazine George, which carried interviews with, amongst others, Fidel Castro. He was also actively involved in much significant philanthropic work.

In 1996, he married Carolyn Bessette, a Calvin Klein publicist, but, on the 16th July 1999, John died alongside her and her sister in a plane which he was piloting, when it crashed off Martha's Vineyard.