Ernest Hemingway's Great-Granddaughter Looks Exactly Like The Legend

Ernest Hemingway is one of America's most renowned writers, building his legacy through novels such as For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and The Old Man and the Sea (1952) and winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954. Hemingway began working in newspapers when he was only 17, but when the United States entered World War I, Hemingway went to Italy and worked as a volunteer ambulance driver. Later, after serving time on the front, he was wounded but decorated by the Italian government for his courage, per The Nobel Prize. 

After the war was over, Hemingway lived in Paris as an expatriate, a story that was romantically told (and certainly embellished) in Woody Allen's 2011 film Midnight in Paris. It was in Paris that Hemingway reportedly began his "important work," and he published The Sun Also Rises in 1926, according to The Nobel Prize. His writing style, with its terse sentences and brevity, soon became iconically recognized, especially in American literature. As The New Yorker suggests: "It's difficult for people who weren't around at the time to grasp the scale of the Hemingway cult in twentieth-century America." 

When Hemingway died in 1961, he didn't just leave behind books. The author also had children, who then had children, leaving a physical Hemingway legacy of flesh and blood. From that family tree, some stars in their own right were born. Meet Dree Hemingway — a granddaughter who looks exactly like the legend.

It seems like it would be virtually impossible to carve out any kind of legacy of one's own if Ernest Hemingway was your great-grandfather, but Dree Hemingway is working as a model and actress, proving that there is room for more than one celebrity within a family tree. 

Dree got her start in modeling for Nicole Miller and has since become the face of Chloé's best-selling perfume. She even has her own Chloé bag, aptly named the "Dree bag." Despite this high-fashion success, Dree has downplayed her catwalk skills, telling Elle magazine, "I always think I look constipated when I walk down the runway." Designers must disagree, because according to IMDb, Dree has also walked for Gucci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Valentino, H&M, Chanel, and Karl Lagerfeld, among other fashion houses. 

Not only is Dree a model, but she's also appeared in films, including 2016's The People Garden, a metaphysical thriller shot in Tokyo that starred Pamela Anderson. Dree was also the star of the independent film Starlet (2012), and she landed supporting roles in Listen Up Philip and While We're Young, both from 2014. Dree got a kick out of seeing the latter featured on in-flight entertainment. It's "cool," she told Elle, "except when I'm on the plane, and then people watching the movie will always look at me like, 'Is that the same girl?' But I look like a hobo, because I'm sleeping and drooling on a plane..."

While Dree Hemingway has carved out a very different career than her famous great-grandfather, there are certainly similarities between the two. Ernest Hemingway spent more than 10 years in Key West, Fla. at what is now famously called The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum. What makes the author's house so remarkable is that it's now home to approximately 50 cats, most of whom are polydactyl (six-toed). According to the museum's website, "Hemingway was given a white six-toed cat by a ship's captain and some of the cats who live on the museum grounds are descendants of that original cat, named Snow White." 

Great-granddaughter Dree also adores felines. "I love cats," she told Elle. In fact, she's definitely inherited Ernest's wanderlust gene. "I love rum! I also love boats. And I love Africa. I love being outdoors. I love exploring people in new places," she said. 

It apparently took a while for Dree Hemingway to fully embrace her connection to the legendary Ernest Hemingway. If you've envisioned her curled up by the fireplace, voraciously reading a leather-bound copy of her great-grandfather's stories ... well, think again. "I studied it in school but I was really not into it," she told Elle in 2015. 

Dree has since changed her opinion about having a legendary writer in the family. "I've recently, now that I'm older and more acknowledging of my family roots — less of a child brat! — I'm honored," she said. "He's incredible and I get it." 

Ernest died in Idaho in 1961, as per The Nobel Prize, and it would seem the Hemingway family established roots there. Dree grew up in Ketchum, Idaho and attended Ernest Hemingway Elementary School, though she told The Wall Street Journal that she and her friends "were all oblivious" to the significance of the connection. She has since lived in California and New York and come to recognize that she shares the same zest for life that made her great-grandfather so remarkable. "I read a lot of biographies on him, and I can definitely feel that we're from the same family," she told Elle. "We both like to travel. We enjoy the same things."

And yes, Dree does do a little writing. She reportedly keeps a journal but has no plans to write stories for public consumption. Bummer.