Edie Sedgwick
Nude

The legend of Edie Sedgwick has been blown up to mythic proportions in memoirs and artwork from those whose paths, however briefly, intersected with her intense orbit. Even people who didn’t know her had a hand in immortalizing Edie’s life. For example, Sienna Miller played Ms. Sedgwick in George Hickenlooper’s fictionalized biopic Factory Girl (2006). A daughter of wealth and privilege, the real Edie traipsed away from the bosom of her blue-blood family to hang out with the geeks and freaks of Andy Warhol’s infamous Factory, a New York City loft that was a magnet to the brightest lights and most demented figures of the ’60s guerrilla-art counterculture. Charmed by Edie’s manic pixie motor-mouth energy, Warhol cast her in several of his underground flicks, most notably The Chelsea Girls (1967). Even though the starlet was incapable of unwrapping a candy bar without sexualizing the act, she remained fully clothed during her onscreen stints. But after surgically enhancing her previously mini mams, she proudly busted out her new plastic fantastics in the semi-autobiographical pic Ciao! Manhattan (1972). The movie proved the adage that if an actress is going to loll around, she might as well loll around in her panties with her bare breasts out. Perhaps that’s why pop diva Lady Gaga made references to Ms. Sedgwick and the film in her Applause and Marry The Night music videos. But considering Edie died young (she passed away from an overdose in 1971), it seems like Elton John should have written her a song.