Griffin Dunne Mourns the Death of His Aunt Joan Didion, Remembers 'Her Self-Respect, Certain Toughness'

Griffin Dunne is paying tribute to his beloved aunt, Joan Didion, after she died on Thursday at her Manhattan home. She was 87.

"Yesterday morning I said goodbye to my Aunt Joan for the last time. Yesterday morning her enormous readership also began their goodbyes to Joan Didion, one of the greatest writers of our time," Dunne said in a statement on Friday. (The actor, 66, is the son of Didion's brother-in-law Dominick Dunne.)

"In 1961, as a young contributor at Vogue, Joan once wrote, 'People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character.' As her nephew, I was fortunate enough to witness firsthand Joan's character, her self-respect, her certain toughness," his statement continued.

"These qualities are ones I admire and have tried to learn from all my life. Her voice was that of a writer who saw things as they were before most of us. She wrote about grief to find out what she felt, but ended up giving hope and meaning to those who needed it most. Now I find myself in grief, which I share with so many others who are also mourning this great loss," Dunne's statement concluded.

The This Is Us star produced and directed the documentary film Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, which was released on Netflix in October 2017. At the time, Dunne released a statement about his aunt and the documentary, which read: "It is a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to convey the life and work of my aunt, and literary icon, Joan Didion. This documentary is a true labor of love and to partner with Netflix, who will help bring this to a global audience, is more than I could have hoped for when I started on this over 5 years ago."

Full of archival footage and one-on-one conversations between Dunne and his "Aunt Joan," Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold features in-depth and intimate details about her work and her life.

Didion, who was born in California in 1934, attended the University of California, Berkeley, and moved to New York after graduation where she began her career at Vogue.

She released her first novel, Run River, in 1963, sparking a career that would span several decades.

In 1964, Didion wed husband John Gregory Dunne, who died at age 71 in 2003. They shared daughter Quintana Roo, who died of pancreatitis and septic shock at age 39 in 2005. Her husband's death and her daughter's illness were written about in The Year of Magical Thinking, which was adapted in 2007 for the one-woman Broadway production starring actress Vanessa Redgrave.

Didion's works include 1968's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1979's The White Album, and 2005's The Year of Magical Thinking, which won a National Book Award for nonfiction writing. Her final published work was the 2021 release of Let Me Tell You What I Mean, an anthology of her essays written from 1968 through 2000.