PARK Magazine

“MY MOTHER WAS SO SMART.
SHE JUST KNEW EXACTLY
HOW TO HANDLE ME.”
Winston F. C. Guest & Ernest Hemingway
Her mother, she adds, never batted an eye. “My mother was
so smart. She just knew exactly how to handle me. I’m sure she
probably shut the door and beat a doll in my place, but she
never flinched.” Her society doyenne mother, a renowned gardening
columnist and equestrian had herself posed in the nude
for painter Diego Rivera while in Mexico in her younger years
and had a short stint performing with the Ziegfeld Follies.
Guest’s father, Winston F. C. Guest, an heir to the Phipps
steel fortune and a cousin of Winston Churchill, was a worldclass
polo player, businessman and close friend of Ernest
Hemingway, who was best man at their wedding. Guest’s
parents eloped to Havana and wed at Hemingway’s ranch
there; Enrique Rousseau, Lilly Pulitzer’s husband, married
them. “I have their original marriage certificate; it’s all written
by hand. It’s quite amazing,” she says.
Templeton
Guest’s childhood home, Templeton, on Long Island’s Gold
Coast, where her parents entertained a Who’s Who of society,
fashion and royalty, including Cornelia’s godparents, the Duke
and Duchess of Windsor, has been razed.
As sad as it was to see the place where she grew up demolished,
in a sense, Guest doesn’t mind, because the place was
so well-loved until the family sold it. “It was so beautiful, and
we had so much fun there,” she says. “It was just a beautiful
old country house; it wasn’t modernized, and I’m glad, in a
way, it’s gone.”
Guest’s teen rebellious streak didn’t hurt her reputation in
the slightest – she was pronounced the “debutante of the
decade” when she came out in the 1981-82 season, and no one
since Brenda Frazier, whose 1930s debut made such a splash
that she appeared on the cover of Life magazine, has had as
much acclaim as a debutante.
Guest grew up surrounded by renowned people from different
circles, and in addition to Warhol, close friends from
her earliest years included Truman Capote, Halston, Carolina
Herrera, Oscar de la Renta, Diana Vreeland, Francesco Scavullo,
Boy George(who lived with her for six months), and Sylvester
Stallone, whom she dated and accompanied to a Reagan-era
White House event where they ended up on the cover
of the New York Post. Many of these folks were at her 18 th
birthday party at Mortimer’s, the Manhattan bistro favored
by movers and shakers.
Sex and Vanity
And Cornelia continues attracting interesting people and
making her mark on the culture – Crazy Rich Asians author
Kevin Kwan is a dear friend, and Cornelia is a character in his
latest novel, Sex and Vanity.
An award-winning equestrian, Cornelia is an actor whose
recent roles include a recurring part in the Twin Peaks reboot
Twin Peaks: The Return. The native New Yorker also made a
decision to move her nonprofit animal sanctuary, Artemis
Farm Rescue, to Texas, where land is plentiful, and the weather
is warm. She’s a longtime board member of the Humane Society
of New York and a vegan.
Acting Career: Twin Peaks, David Lynch & Lena Headey
Being cast in a key role on Twin Peaks was a dream job for
Guest. Producer Mark Frost and creator David Lynch were
“amazing” to work with. Lynch told her to go all out, “go for it
and have fun.”
Guest, who has shot more than 30 film and TV projects,
gets parts in various ways – sometimes she auditions, sometimes
there’s serendipity involved, like The Shuroo Process,
currently in theaters and starring Eric Roberts, Donal Brophy
and Emrhys Cooper. “They were using a friend of mine’s farm
down the road from my place in upstate New York as a location,”
says Guest. “And she said, ‘You know, there’s a great part
in this. You need to meet these guys.’ So, I met them, and
kaboom, next thing I knew, I got the part.”
She recently wrapped production on Nine Bullets, with
Lena Headey, Sam Worthington and Barbara Hershey. Gigi
Gaston, an old friend, directed and wrote the film, and invited
Guest to audition. She also appeared as Halston’s Directrice
D.D.Ryan in the Amazon docudrama Halston. “I wore a black
wig and glasses, and no one knows it’s me,” she laughed.
Artemis Farm Rescue
In 2015, Guest purchased a 456-acre estate in Ancramdale,
in upstate New York, to house her animal sanctuary, Artemis
Farm Rescue, which specializes in miniature horses and donkeys.
She hates cold weather, but Long Island, where she spent