Cheryl Hines admits she has gone through “a lot of darkness” over the past few years.
The actress has come under fire for her choice to stand by her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the most divisive men in America.
She has lost friends — and not spoken to her “Curb Your Enthusiasm” co-star Larry David in a “long time” — as members of her husband’s famous family have publicly slammed Kennedy.
And, of course, she has had to face the embarrassment of his alleged online affair, a soap opera that shows no signs of slowing down.
While much of this was going on, Hines has had to cope with the devastating loss of her 20-year-old nephew, Michael, who had cerebral palsy and died in May 2024.
“I went through a lot of darkness and not only because of politics,” Hines, 60, exclusively told Page Six. “I lost my nephew in the last year and it was heartbreaking. And to deal with that loss while this other chaos was going on, there were dark times.
“But I am definitely in a new chapter that I could never have predicted I would be in.”
It’s truly an unexpected situation for the woman who was raised in a trailer in Tallahassee, Florida, and went on to star in an Emmy-winning TV hit.
Hines’ new memoir, “Unscripted,” details much of it, including why she has chosen to stay with husband, who is 71 and now the US Secretary of Health and Human Services.
She readily admits that “people ask me why do I stay married to him.
“There’s extremes on both sides to Bobby — and being his wife — because there are a lot of people who absolutely love and support him. And then there are people who, no matter what he accomplishes, are still going to criticize him,” Hines said.
“And I thought it was important for me to say: this is why I love him. This is who he is as a person and this is who we are to each other. If I’m just telling the truth about what I’ve been through ,,, it makes me feel better because they’re my own words and you can’t misconstrue them.”
Hines first met Kennedy, the son of Ethel Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, on a 2004 ski trip fundraiser organized by David who, like Kennedy, was very involved in environmental activism. At the time, the political scion was wed to his second wife and Hines was married to her first husband, a film producer.
When they met again six years later, both were unattached and, Hines writes, “I was thunderstruck from the moment we started talking. I don’t know how I missed before how blue his eyes are. I felt his magnetic energy. He has since told me he felt the same way.”
They married at Ethel’s famous compound in Hyannisport, Mass., in 2014.
But last fall, journalist Olivia Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé alleged that Nuzzi had a nearly year-long affair with Kennedy after interviewing him for New York Magazine.
Hines learned about the news when she was on vacation in Italy with some of her and Kennedy’s children from previous relationships, including her daughter Catherine, 21, and had to “table my breakdown until I was alone … The swirl of headlines, rumors and insinuations was upsetting and overwhelming. I had hit a wall.”
She ended up staying in Europe “for a while” before coming back to meet Kennedy, meeting in their car while private security kept watch.
“I felt so distant from him. It seemed like the only threads that were connecting me to him were directly tied to all of our kids … I respected and adored them too much not to listen to what Bobby had to say.”
Over the next few days, she writes, “we stopped everything and drilled down on the truth …Through these soul-searching days, we tightened our ties that bind.”
Kennedy has denied having a sexual or romantic relationship with Nuzzi, whose ex this week also accused her of having an affair with former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford.
Asked how she is coping now, as Nuzzi’s upcoming book — complete with a New York Times interview and Vanity Fair excerpt in which she revealed intimate details about Kennedy — is dominating the news cycle, Hines simply said: “I stay focused on my life, my family, what I am accomplishing and doing, and I have to block out the chatter. And … the outside chatter does get very loud and overwhelming at times.”
It’s clear that Hines has a steely spine, as she writes of driving a “dilapidated Tercel from Florida to LA to pursue her acting dream. She tended bar for many years and said she was near-broke as she went on auditions and studied with the Groundlings comedy troupe before getting her breakthrough role in “Curb” at age 37. Initially, she was told it was a one-off special and was stunned when HBO picked it up to series.
Her life changed yet again in April 2023 when Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, announced his intention to run for president.
After Kennedy’s father was assassinated while running for president himself in 1968 — five years after his uncle, John F. Kennedy, was killed while in office — a law was passed providing Secret Service protection within 120 days of a general elections to candidates deemed eligible.
Hines was fearful for her husband’s safety from the start.
“The fact that he didn’t [initially] get Secret Service protection when he was a presidential candidate is unacceptable,” she told Page Six. “During that time, I would stay dressed with my shoes on until I was ready to go to bed, just because I didn’t know what was going to happen. And there were phone calls saying ‘Someone just showed up at his rally with loaded guns and was asking to see Bobby’ So it was a real concern.”
In October 2023, an intruder was arrested twice on the same day for trespassing at Hines and Kennedy’s Los Angeles home.
Two days after an assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, President Biden announced Secret Service protection for Kennedy.
Hines was in the room on July 16, 2024, when Kennedy, then still in the race as an independent, met with Trump.
“He had the bandage on his ear that was a reminder of how close the bullet was to his temple. It really struck me that something could happen in an instant that would change everything. And I knew that Bobby was out there every day campaigning just like President Trump was doing … ” Hines said.
“They were talking about life and death situations, what that meant. So when we got out of that meeting, my body went into overdrive and I broke out into hives.”
Things got intense that evening, Hines recalled, when Kennedy wanted to discuss the idea of dropping out and endorsing Trump.
“They did connect on a lot of levels and had common goals that they wanted to accomplish,” she said. But “the stress of all of it was a lot. And then my lips started swelling and I was worried that my throat might start closing up and I had to go to urgent care.”
Hines feels the volume was turned up by intense public criticism from members of Kennedy’s family — including people she had previously felt very close to.
Shortly after Kennedy announced his run as an independent, four of his siblings said his candidacy was “dangerous for our country.”
In January of this year, when President Trump announced Kennedy’s nomination for Health and Human Services secretary, cousin Caroline Kennedy — the daughter of JFK — publicly called him “a predator.”
“That was very hard because I love Bobby’s family and I have spent a lot of time with them and they’d been important to me,” said Hines. “When Bobby started running and they made it clear they didn’t support his candidacy, that was understandable. But when they spoke out publicly criticizing him, it added to the security risk that he was taking. And I found it to be very upsetting.”
So where does Hines herself stand on some of Kennedy’s most controversial views — including about vaccine science?
“One of the points that I really wanted to make in the book is that I don’t think we need to politicize health,” she told Page Six. “And it’s not black and white — to me anyway … I just thought it was important to say, ‘let’s take a breath and listen to each other and not judge each other.’”
Hines, a registered independent, confirmed she is spending more time these days in Washington, DC, than her longtime home of LA.
“There are a lot of passionate people there,” Hines, who is a registered independent, said of Los Angeles. “And when Bobby became very outspoken about vaccines, it started a conversation with my friends and me. So they — some, not all — would want to ask me questions about Bobby. And some friends just felt like there was a hard line, although I never had fights with anyone where somebody said, ‘That’s it. I’m never speaking to you again.’
“But I could feel some friends becoming distant,” she admitted. “At the same time, I have friends that I play poker with in LA and nothing has changed.”
One old pal she hasn’t heard from in a while is her “Curb” co-star David, who is known for his support of the Democratic party and has called Trump a “sociopath.”
“Larry has always been a good friend. And I know that he’s very passionate about politics,” Hines said. “So I haven’t spoken to him in a long time, but I can only imagine that he probably has a lot of feelings about how things have unfolded.”
But Hines is learning to embrace the positives in her life.
“I’m learning something new every day. I didn’t know I would be learning so much about politics, but I am. And actually it makes me happy to learn new things,” she said. “I feel like I’m at a place now where I can appreciate what’s happening in my life, and I feel strong and ready, and I’m having a really good time with the people around me.”
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