AN AUTOPSY was ordered yesterday for the actress and model Margaux Hemingway, whose badly decomposed body was found in her apartment. Officials said she probably died of natural causes.
The actress, whose career had waned and who reportedly suffered from drinking problems, also "had a history of epilepsy," according to the Los Angeles medical examiner's office.
The body of the 41 year old granddaughter of writer Ernest Hemingway was found at her beach front apartment on Monday after friends and neighbours alerted police that she had not been seen since late Saturday.
"There is no sign of forced entry or foul play," said Sgt Gary Gallinot of the Santa Monica police department. "We have no evidence of suicide, no note or anything like that. But we are not ruling it out."
Her agent, Mr David Mirisch, told a local television station that he saw her last week and she wept often.
"During the past week or 10 days, she hasn't really been the Margaux Hemingway we all knew," he said.
Born in Ketchum, Idaho, Margaux Hemingway began working as a model in New York in 1974 and quickly rose to fame, signing a million dollar contract as Faberge's "Fabulous Babe" in 1975. The following year she starred in her first major film, Lipstick, with her sister Mariel, who is seven years younger.
The film flopped, sending the Hemingway sisters in opposite directions Margaux never acted in another major film, while her sister went on to work with Woody Allen in Manhattan and, more recently, in her own television series Central Park West.
Margaux Hemingway's personal life began deteriorating into alcoholism.
The Rev Bill Minson, a friend of Hemingway's for some 20 years, said she had been "gallantly battling a depression that would come and go". Her grandfather also suffered from severe depression. Ironically his granddaughter's body was found on the very day he committed suicide 35 years ago, July 2nd, 1961.