Today, Edie Sedgwick would have been 78 years old. Edie and her tragic life has always fascinated me. I’ve always related to her. As Edie once put it, “It’s not that I’m rebelling. I’m just trying to find a different way.”

Below is the “screen test” that Andy Warhol shot of Edge Sedgwick in 1964. Warhol did screen tests of several famous people, everyone from Dennis Hopper to Salvador Dali to Bob Dylan to the various denizens of the Factory. He would simply turn on the camera and film without sound and it’s always interesting to see how each subject deal with being filmed without direction. Edie was one of the few who controlled the camera from the minute her screen test began to the moment that it ended.

Edie Sedgwick’s life is often described as being a tragedy and, certainly, it was. But it was also filled with hope and optimism and future promise. That the world ultimately proved to be unworthy of Edie does not change who she was or how important she was to the development of pop culture.

Today, on her birthday, we honor the the amazing Edie Sedgwick.