Goodwill Ambassador on Drug Dependence Treatment and Care, in 2012, was involved in a campaign against opiate use in Afghanistan, and served on the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime. His cousin, former Rhode Island congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, said about Lawford: "Chris was one of those people who had a way of telling stories that lifted people’s perceptions and judgments of those who suffer from the disease of addiction". Personal life Marriages and children Lawford was married and divorced three times. He had three children, David Christopher Kennedy Lawford (named after his cousin David Kennedy), Savannah Rose Lawford, and Matthew Peter Valentine Lawford with his first wife Jeannie Olsson, an ad-sales assistant for New York Magazine. They divorced in 2000. In 2005, he married Russian actress Lana Antonova; they divorced in 2009. In 2014, Lawford married yoga instructor Mercedes Miller in Hawaii. At the time of his death in 2018, he had been in a relationship with his girlfriend Kyla Resch since August 2017. Death On September 4, 2018, Lawford died of a heart attack in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he was living with his girlfriend and working to open a recovery center. He had a medical emergency at a yoga studio and later died. Patrick Kennedy told the Associated Press that Lawford had been doing "hot yoga, which he did often, but the strain of it 'must have been too much for him at that point'". Lawford's cousins Maria Shriver, Patrick Kennedy, and Kerry Kennedy took to Twitter after his death, honoring Lawford's work in the recovery community. Filmography Film Television Bibliography Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption, 2005 Healing Hepatitis C, 2009 Moments of Clarity: Voices from the Front Lines of Addiction and Recovery, 2009 Recover to Live: Kick Any Habit, Manage Any Addiction, 2013 What Addicts Know: 10 Lessons from Recovery to Benefit Everyone, 2014 See also Kennedy family tree Kennedy curse References External links 1955 births 2018 deaths American film producers American health and wellness writers American male film actors American male soap opera actors American male television actors American male non-fiction writers American memoirists American philanthropists American political activists American people of Irish descent American people of English descent Boston College Law School alumni Harvard University alumni Kennedy family Male actors from Santa Monica, California Tufts University alumni Writers from Santa Monica, California Middlesex School alumni