New York’s Power Siblings

Illustration by Drew Friedman

You know you’re in a weird family moment when one sister is interviewing another on the red carpet outside the Oscars. “Versace?” asked Lynda Lopez, 30, wielding the mike for the WB. “What else?” quipped her older sister J.Lo, 32. Three Lopez sisters shared a room in the Bronx: Leslie, now 34, is a mother and music teacher in Westchester; Jennifer scandalized the family by dropping out of Baruch after one semester; Lynda, the self-described “family brainiac,” went to Long Island University. Now Jennifer’s developing a sitcom pilot based on their childhood experiences (described by Lynda as “strict curfews, no going out on weeknights, and no dating until you were some ridiculous age”). But don’t expect to see Lynda, now at NBC, in a cameo. “You have to be crazy to want to be an actor,” she has said. “I want to be able to come out of a bar at 3 a.m. and not have to worry about who’s there.”








Photo: Courtesy of Matthew and Emily Kramer

Co-founders of Cake, a downtown sex partyMatt on Emily: “I have no interest in knowing about my sister’s personal sexual experiences. At our strip-a-thon parties, she’s the one who starts off the striptease. People will come up to me and say, ‘Dude, your sister’s stripping,’ or ‘Your sister’s hot.’ At that point, I just check out.” Emily on Matt: “We talk about what porn we should sell on our Website totally in business terms. It’s never personal, ever. That’s a necessary boundary. We’ll be talking about the design of a vibrator together, and he’ll say, ‘It should have this shape,’ and I’ll say, ‘Well … you know, I don’t know if it should have this shape.’ I can top him on that.”

Related Link:Cake

Photo: AP Photos

Andrew, 44, politician, and Chris, 32, 20/20 correspondentThe Cuomo boys, who garner more ink than their three sisters – Maria Cuomo Cole, Margaret, and Madeline – are close, if differently tempered. “Andrew is much more cerebral,” says one friend of the family, “while Chris is this nice guy who knows how to play the game. I’ve always gotten the feeling that Andrew fucks with Chris a little bit.” Chris arrived at the start of his father’s political career. “In those early years, Andrew spent a lot of time with him,” Mario says, “taught him how to fix cars and ride a bike. He was more than a big brother, and that has never changed. Chris is a little swifter, I think, in repartee, especially in humorous situations. He was serving as emcee at family events when he was 14, and did it at his brother’s bachelor party when he was 19.”



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Illustration by Drew Friedman

The family that puts up bail together stays together: In 2000, both Victoria, now 38, the thriller writer turned Post columnist, and her brother, Junior, 37, the Gambino-family acting boss (once referred to as “a babbling idiot” by his father, John) each put up their million-dollar mansions to bail out Victoria’s then-husband, Carmine Agnello. Nice gesture, but no dice: Agnello’s now in jail until 2010 for racketeering. Junior, alas, fell prey to a similar indictment; now he’s behind bars until 2005, which is why he missed Dad’s funeral in June. “The private joke within the family is that we’re Irish twins – we’re born only about a year apart,” says Victoria. “I would think we’re closer than twins. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for him. I remember I was a skinny kid with glasses, knock-kneed, always ill, and he just always rushed to my aid. He was that protective of me.”



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Illustration by Drew Friedman

Russell Simmons, 45, is the founder of Def Jam Records. Joey “Reverend Run” Simmons, 38, is one third of Run-DMC (which recently lost D.J. Jam Master Jay) and has launched a sneaker with Russell’s Phat Farm fashion label. Danny Simmons, 49, runs the Corridor Gallery in Fort Greene and with Russell is producing Def Poetry, a spoken-word performance series for HBO, coming to Broadway this week. Was it crazy around your house?
Russell: We had the same crew then we have now. Except Danny’s crew’s all dead from AIDS. A lot of my crew didn’t make it.
Danny: I’m ten years sober last week.
Russell: I’m twelve years sober – except for the holidays, when I smoke and drink.
Danny: Russell came to my rescue; he really saved my life.
Russell: We took some acid together – I made him promise he wouldn’t do heroin.Run, you became a reverend around the same time your brothers got sober.
Run: I did what everybody else did. You know, I smoked a lot of weed; at the end of it, I was unfulfilled like everybody else and I went to church.
Who’s in charge?
Run: I’m the spiritual leader.
Danny: I’m the creative leader. Russell’s the business leader.
Russell: Joey’s the leading kid-maker.
Run: I got five kids.
Russell: I got my second one. I’m catching up to him.
Run: I’m the youngest, but I’m the grown man.
Danny: When our mother died, Russell was a mess, I was a mess – Joey took over and made everything flow right.
Russell: I learned something about that experience. People who have faith are not so afraid of death.



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O Brother Ethan, left, and Joel
Photo: AP Photos

Joel, 47, director, and Ethan, 45, producerWhen a reporter once asked the Coen brothers about their fascination with large men sitting behind big desks, Joel said, “Our father’s very slim and never sits behind a desk.” This much we do know: They grew up in Minnesota (as revisited in Fargo), which Ethan calls “Siberia with family-style restaurants.” Their parents are Orthodox Jews. According to the credits, Joel directs and Ethan produces; in reality, they both do both, and also co-edit under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes. How do you tell them apart? Joel’s the one married to Frances McDormand; Ethan’s the one who reportedly goes to parties bringing something to read. Characteristic too-cool-for-school pose: The brothers adapted Homer’s Odyssey into O Brother Where Art Thou? without actually having read it. “I hear it’s good, though,” Ethan said at the time.








George, 41, anchor, and Mother Agapia, 43, nunAn ethical streak runs in the family: After his time in the Clinton White House, George mea culpa’d in a memoir and now hosts ABC’s This Week. His older sister, Maria (known as Mother Agapia), lives in the West Bank, running a school for Arab girls. Their father, Robert, is the dean of New York’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral; Mom is the diocese’s spokesperson. (Younger sister Marguarite, 39, works for Goldman Sachs, and Andrew, 38, is studying psychology.) “A priest’s family is automatically part of an adult atmosphere, a public atmosphere,” says one family friend. “George and Andrew altared from the time they were 4. They became independent, self-confident.”



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Say Cheese: Sandra, Wendy, and Bruce Wasserstein on vacation in Miami

We all had our family labels. My mother called my oldest sister Sandra a strazac, which literally means “fireman,” but my mother told us it was a general in the Polish Army. Gorgeous was, well, gorgeous. Bruce was a genius, conveniently born on Christmas Eve with, according to my mother, Messiah potential. My talent was to accommodate larger personalities and observe; solid early training for a playwright.Three years ago, Sandra, a female pioneer in corporate America, died of breast cancer. I am constantly running into successful women who knew her and tell me, “She was my mentor; she made it all possible for me.” Part of me wants to reply, “No, you don’t understand, she really made it all possible for me.” She was the one whose judgment I counted on most because I believed she was always somehow in charge.Bruce, on the other hand, was my personal protector. My brother never excluded me from adventures because I was a girl. I think of us roaming through the brush of land my father, Morris, owned in the Catskills. At the end of the trail, Bruce planted a stick, proclaiming it Bruceania. It never occurred to me to claim the new world as Wendyania. In order to create my own ground, I became a playwright. Shortly after my brother sold his investment bank, Wasserstein, Perella, and before he opted to become head of Lazard, we were having a brother-sister luncheon at ‘21.’ “So, Bruce, what do you think you’ll do now?” I asked him – softly, so no one could hear us. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll become a playwright!” He was, I believe, half serious. – WENDY WASSERSTEIN

Illustration by Drew Friedman

Baseball figured so prominently in the O’Neill household in Columbus, Ohio, that Paul’s father – the ex-minor-leaguer his son so famously mourned during the 1999 World Series – focused on his five boys only to the extent that they played ball. Meanwhile, the oldest child and sole daughter, Molly, would look on from the stands. In lieu of baseball, Molly drew, wrote (journals since the age of 7), and helped in the kitchen. “When you have all those kids, you tend to cook,” she says. “It was: Love me, love my food.” Paul, the youngest child, was born when Molly was 10. “I got to be an only child at the beginning, and Paul got to be an only child at the end,” she says. “That’s something we hold in common. We both got our parents’ undivided attention for a few years.” But she moved east, eventually joining the Times as a food critic, while Paul played for the Reds. When Paul became a Yankee in 1992, he wasn’t thrilled about moving to New York – until he found that without his parents in the stands, his playing improved dramatically. “It was harder to play in Cincinnati,” he says. “It was a hometown thing. I think being a perfectionist runs in our family. That comes from Dad.” Now retired at age 39, Paul still does analysis and color for the YES Network. Molly is at work on a book about their childhood. “Our family is supposedly related to Mark Twain,” she says. “And you know, the Irish are storytellers: You live through something, and then you figure out how to give it a happy ending.”



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Photo: AP Photo

The Bloombergs
Michael, 60, mayor, and Marjorie Tiven, 58, city commissioner for the United NationsBefore being hired (at $1 a year) by her brother to be City Hall’s chief protocol officer, Tiven, a social worker, chatted up the Times about the mayor’s boyhood passion for snakes. “There were incidents of snakes’ escaping,” she said. ” ‘Have you seen my snake?’ he would ask. I remember once looking through the kitchen door and seeing this large snake, several feet long, slithering down the steps.” At City Hall, Tiven has worked with the State Department on the dicey diplomatic-parking-violations issue and helped coordinate the comings and goings of 100 heads of state for the 9/11 anniversary. “It’s good that diplomats feel they have a close relationship with the mayor, and who better to do that than the mayor’s sister?” one source says. “She’s one of those high-energy people who get on your nerves a little, frankly.”



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Photo: AP Photos; Courtesy of MSUCOM

Barbara dreamed of becoming a dancer, but when she realized she didn’t have the makings of a star, she became a doctor instead. In 1993, she was the first African-American woman to head a medical school (the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine). Earlier this year, she was named dean of the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine in Old Westbury. “Most people think it’s rude to mention my sister or that I’d be offended by it,” Diana says. “But I love talking about her.” She also doesn’t mind shooting down rumors that their father actually pushed Barbara to sing and not Diana. “That was never the case,” Barbara says. “I never even attempted to be a singer. But it sure was fun hanging out with the Supremes and getting into all those dance clubs.”








Illustration by Drew Friedman

The Trumps
Donald Trump, 56, is a developer. Maryanne Trump Barry, 65, is a federal appeals court judge in New Jersey. Judge Barry, you didn’t go into the family business?
Maryanne: I knew better even as a child than to even attempt to compete with Donald. I wouldn’t have been able to win. He was building models when he was very young. Huge buildings.
Donald Trump: I think we’re both lucky she didn’t want to. We’d have been butting heads.
Maryanne: I worked for my father for a number of summers, but I was doing woman’s work, decorating lobbies. I didn’t go back to law school until my son David was in sixth grade.
Donald: But she ultimately became a federal judge, one notch below the Supreme Court!
Maryanne: (grinning) I held New York City in contempt for Fresh Kills polluting the Jersey shore.
Donald: Which didn’t exactly make me popular in New York. I was taking heat.
What don’t people know about your brother?
Maryanne: Six years ago, I had an operation. Donald came to the hospital every single day. Once would have been enough – the duty call. That’s how love shows, when you go that extra yard. Last year, on his birthday, I had a little dinner at my apartment. I cooked. No maids, I don’t have a maid. And Donald said afterward, “That was just like Mom made!” That was what I was waiting for. Just like Mom made.
Donald: She’s never told me that before, so I’m very, very …
Maryanne: Well, my praise is sparing as the older sister.



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Brothers at odds: Sam, top, and Harlan, bottom.Photo: AP Photos

Under indictment for insider trading, ImClone impresario Sam Waksal is now being sued by the very company he founded eighteen years ago. And who is sitting in the president’s office? Younger brother Harlan, the suburban dad who started the company but (coke bust in the eighties notwithstanding) raised kids in Jersey while Sam courted the likes of Martha Stewart and Mick Jagger in the Hamptons. Harlan has recused himself from board votes affecting Sam. But at least one ex-employee wonders if the family isn’t still sticking together: “Harlan and Sam might have talked about it. He might have said, ‘Look, we’re going to sue you; it’ll create a pretense of animosity.’ “



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Holiday Greetings: Ric and Ken Burns in an early collaborationPhoto: Courtesy of Florentine Films

Ric, 47, on Ken, 49: Ken likes to say that I’m more intellectual than he is, which is a subtle put-down on his part. I have a natural inclination for things that are darker. Our family background was garden-variety “very miserable.” Our mother got cancer when we were little boys. Our father, who died last year, was subtly, but grievously, mentally ill his entire life. I think Ken has a more “We shall overcome” attitude. I have a more “Gee, it was fucked” attitude. Just when I’m sure that he’s irretrievably a horrifying son of a bitch, he’ll do some act of amazing generosity. He said to me a year ago, “Why don’t we just not bug each other anymore? There’s room enough in the world – there’s room enough in this family – for two documentary filmmakers.” I didn’t know that was something my older brother was capable of saying. And like a little puppy dog, I was like “Ooooh,” about to burst into tears.Ken on Ric: Of all the imitators of my style, no one has done it better than Ric. Our films do look a lot alike. But he really has done something with it in his own way. That’s a terrific thing. We’ve gone in cycles and rhythms, from times where we were so intensely close that we’ve needed to talk to each other three times a day to times in which competition and suspicion replaced that need. People observing it from the outside have seen it from its tabloid, sensational aspect: BROTHER VERSUS BROTHER. We just look at it and shrug, because it seems so superficially considered. The love of my two kids is the greatest thing I know. But the love of my brother is next.



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Field of Dreams: Max Wiseman (a cousin), Doc Pomus, and Raoul Felder in Depression-era Williamsburg.Photo: Courtesy of Raoul Felder

Growing up in working-class Williamsburg, a teenage Raoul Felder would help his older brother, Jerome, who was crippled from polio, in and out of cabs to get to gigs in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “They didn’t want to pick up handicapped people,” he remembers. Though Felder, now 67, was nine years younger, the two shared a room. “I can’t play any instrument, and he had a hell of a time getting me piano teachers,” Felder says. “They’d be there all night long, sessions in the kitchen. I remember there was one guy who virtually lived with us, and it took a neighbor saying something pejorative for me to realize that this guy was black.” Jerome, who died from lung cancer in 1991, took the name Doc Pomus and went on to write “Viva Las Vegas,” “Little Sister,” and “This Magic Moment”; Raoul found his voice representing the city’s powerful and rich in their divorces. The brothers’ paths crossed often, usually at night: “When I was in the U.S. attorney’s office, he was living opposite the Brill Building,” Felder remembers. “He would hold court in the lobby, and a steady string of characters would come in and out. I was an insomniac, so I would go over and stay till the morning. He was friendly with criminals. He was the same person whoever he spoke to. He could be talking to Bob Dylan or the messenger boy.” Felder’s favorite Doc Pomus song? ” ‘This Magic Moment’ I thought was very good,” he says, his eyes glistening. “But my favorite is ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ – here was a person who could not dance!”



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Photo: AP Photos

Rosie’s not the only openly gay member of her family. The former talk-show queen’s older brother, Daniel, became the state’s first out gay male Assembly member when he was elected last week to represent the Upper West Side’s 69th District. He doesn’t know if his famously loudmouthed sister helped or hindered his political aspirations. At least one voter told him during his failed attempt at a State Senate seat four years ago that she wasn’t voting for him because she didn’t like his sister. “I looked at her and said, ‘Which one?’ ” Danny remembers. “She ooked very confused, but I presume she voted for my opponent.” Rosie has never campaigned for her brother. “If she showed up at a subway stop one morning, the reports would be all about Rosie at the subway and not about my campaign,” he says. Unlike Rosie, who came out last year, Danny’s been out most of his adult life. He met his partner of 22 years, a special-events coordinator for the American Ballet Theatre, on the first day of their freshman year at Catholic University. But he’s leaving the child-rearing to Rosie and their three other siblings: “We have thirteen nieces and nephews.”

Every night, the Fosters go to work three blocks away from each other. When Hunter landed the lead in Urinetown, his first starring role, he assumed that the show wouldn’t go far. “I was killing time; I thought it would be a modest run,” he says. In the role of Bobby Strong, the rebel leader, he charmed critics with his exuberance and deadpan delivery of campy lines. Sutton’s Tony-winning performance in Millie was a fairy-tale story: She was plucked from the chorus to play the lead a week before Broadway previews. “I cried, I was terrified,” she recalls. “I thought they must be making a mistake.” Hunter admits that he was disappointed he didn’t get the Tony nod as well this year. “I wanted it to be the two of us,” he says. “It would have been special that way.”

One day in suburban New Jersey, Sunny and Lee Mindel’s family beagle had the temerity to defecate on a neighbor’s picnic table. The neighbor – in Sunny’s words, “a cigar-chomping, blustery misanthrope” – took the Mindels to court. No sooner had their father declared that he would represent himself than he went back to the beagle’s breeder, found six of the dog’s relatives, and corralled them into court for what Sunny and Lee believe was the first-ever doggy lineup. “He actually asked the man to identify the perp,” Sunny marvels. “To our family, this was perfectly logical. Frankly, I was stunned when I found out that some of the things going on in our house weren’t going on in everybody else’s.”

After a ruling last spring that Vinnie’s bathrobe routine was just an act (he got twelve years for racketeering in 1997), the Feds all but accused Father G., as he’s known, of abetting the ruse by insisting his brother wasn’t fit to stand trial. “He happens to be an exceptional brother,” Louis maintains. If Louis were to be indicted for obstructing justice, it would be an amazing coda to a more amazing life: The priest’s nonprofit group has built hundreds of units of low-income housing, and in 1989, he put up $25,000 bail for one of the accused rapists of the Central Park jogger.

Jerry’s sister, who lives on Long Island, has handled his affairs for as long as he’s had affairs to handle. She scouted out a place for the Seinfelds in the Hamptons and serves as “president” of the Upper West Side garage that houses Jerry’s storied car collection (Jerry is vice-president). She also quietly administers Jerry’s scholarship program at Manhattan’s LaGuardia High School through pencil, the group that organizes Principal for a Day. “She’s great,” says one source close to the grant program. “They just don’t want to appear braggy.”

Chloë Sevigny and her older brother, broker turned D.J. Paul, have turned New York into their own personal playground of late. While Chloë racks up movie credits and magazine spreads, Paul has been making upwards of $5,000 a night as a D.J. for some of the city’s biggest events. “He’s the perfect date for events, because he’s articulate, charming, and then I don’t have to talk to anybody,” says Chloë. What’s more, Paul uses his charm to promote his sister at every opportunity: “I talk to a lot more people than she does. I’m always, ‘Why aren’t you putting Chloë in this movie?’ ‘Why isn’t Chloë in this magazine?’ ” Paul has gotten her at least two films this past year, they agree. “I was his little annoying sister,” admits Chloë. “I would fake-cry a lot, and he would get in trouble over me. Nonetheless, a boy from our block was bothering me one time, and Paul hit him. He’s always been very protective.”

It takes a certain type of person to fire his own brother. But that is exactly what Condé Nast president Steve Florio did to his younger brother Tom, then president of The New Yorker, in 1998. Tom survived, of course, and went on to head Vogue, the jewel in the Newhouse crown. Weirdly, the cigar-smoking brothers have held the same job twice: Both have been publisher of Vogue and president of The New Yorker. By all accounts, the relationship is a highly charged one as both vie for the opaque S.I.’s approval. Steve is the more extroverted: “I can suck the air out of a room,” he has admitted. But people wonder: Now that he’s run most of the flashy Condé Nast titles, what’s next for Tom after Vogue?

Comedian David Spade could have told you a long time ago that his brother, Andy, has an eye for fashion – one that’s helped launch a million handbags bearing his wife’s name (not to mention his own men’s accessories line, Jack Spade). In the eighth grade, Andy called his kid brother on the carpet for sporting light-blue cords with a light-blue shirt and forced him to at least break up the colors with a belt! “That’s when I knew he would be a multi-millionaire,” David has said.

“I would punch him, he would cry, I’d get punished,” says Susan Cheever, 59, of growing up with her brother Ben, 54, who puts it more bluntly: “We hated each other.” As adults, though, the two are less prone to tears and fists. Both writers, they share their work over the phone once a week. “I refer to Ben as one of my Column Victims,” Susan says, referring to the small group she reads her Newsday column to before sending it off. “Just the other day, I read something to Susan and she caught a few mistakes,” says Ben, who admits he was at first jealous of Susan’s writing. Of course, having John Cheever as a father only compounded their growing pains. “I think we’re so close because our difficult relationships were both with our father,” says Susan, who introduced Ben to his wife, Times critic Janet Maslin. “There are many misconceptions about how we grew up,” Ben says. “People assume our father was rich, that he was constantly dropping writing tips out of his pockets. It wasn’t like that – he was very ambivalent about us becoming writers. It’s amazing to be close with someone who just knows that.”

Photo: AP Photo

Letty is listed as a producer on some of his better-reviewed movies, including Bullets Over Broadway and Deconstructing Harry, and played an instrumental role in warming Woody up to the idea of allowing Barbara Kopple to document his jazz tour in Wild Man Blues. Earlier this year, when Woody was suing ex-partner Jean Doumanian, it looked as if that relationship would shatter: On the stand, Woody claimed repeatedly that his sister knew next to nothing about producing films and that he had no idea what it was she did for Doumanian. But just last month, it was announced that the sibs would be working together again on the funnyman’s latest stab at theater, two one-act plays to be staged next April.

Jenny on Martha: “I would not be writing without Martha. We went on a book tour together – a lesson in humiliation. There’d be four people in the store, two of them your school friends. But with a sister, you go out to dinner, have a glass of wine, and do it again tomorrow. We are also very competitive. When the call came about her National Book Award nomination, the first thing I said was, ‘I’m seething with jealousy. But that’s wonderful!’ “Martha on Jenny: “I had incredible jealousy when Jenny published her first book. After she sold it, she called me, and I said, ‘Bravo!’ But it was a long time before I could talk to her. It was stupid and irrational, but I was in the dark days of my second novel.” Joan on Martha and Jenny: “My sisters are my two advisers. Martha had me do writing exercises; at the end of the Bill Bradley campaign, which I worked on, Jenny encouraged me to write a book. I’m the baby; I was spoiled silly.”

Throughout her stratospheric rise to Ultimate “It” Girl, Gwyneth Paltrow has remained close to her kid brother, Jake, an aspiring director. She singled him out during her famously teary acceptance speech at the 1999 Oscars, has thrown him A-list birthday parties, scored him a P.A. gig when she was making Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight, and is often seen roaming the West Village with him. Jake’s career has been limited to TV, but that may soon change. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Gwyneth whimsically remarked, “I would only produce if a great project came along. For example, if I could get the rights to The Secret History by Donna Tartt for my brother, Jake, to direct, I would produce it.” A few weeks later, Miramax joined up with Warner Bros. to make the film, with Gwyneth producing and – that’s right – Jake directing.

As a player, John stole the show, but as a coach, Patrick seems the better fit. In 2000, Patrick replaced John as the U.S. Davis Cup captain. “It was a difficult role to follow his talent,” Patrick has said. “He was very supportive of me in whatever I did.” For his part, John says, “My kid brother always got the ice cream. That’s okay – I always got the title.”

Josh – who engineered Chuck Schumer’s upset victory over Senator Al D’Amato in 1998 (and Andrew Cuomo’s fizzled gubernatorial effort earlier this year) – got his start volunteering for the John Anderson campaign at age 10. Big brother Dave, meanwhile, showed few signs of one day getting a MacArthur “genius” grant and three Peabody awards for his audio documentaries. “I was a fat, miserable slob,” Dave says. “I sat in front of a TV and ate Cheetos, and Josh was the cute kid with a bow tie that everybody got along with. But in my family, I was the normal one.”

Everyone knows Dominick and his brother, John Gregory, didn’t speak for a decade – what nobody knows is exactly why. Dominick has hinted that it had to do with the 1982 murder of his daughter, Dominique. But then again, it’s also well known that Dominick was hitting the bottle so hard back then that he had to camp in the Oregon woods for six months to dry out. What’s clear is that the two were once extremely close (they worked together on the 1972 film Play It As It Lays, based on the novel by John Gregory’s wife, Joan Didion) and now seem to have patched things up. Dominick reported recently in Vanity Fair that John Gregory “roared with laughter” at Dominick’s impression of Gore Vidal.

When Andrew and David Solomon’s mother decided she had suffered enough with ovarian cancer, she ended her life with an overdose while Andrew, David, and their father sat by her bedside. Later, Andrew wrote about her euthanasia in a groundbreaking piece in The New Yorker. How did his brother take it? “I was very supportive, actually,” says David, a lawyer and film producer who also works for their father at Forest Laboratories, which developed the antidepressant Celexa in response to Andrew’s depression. “I was famous as a child for never wanting to talk about things, and Andrew was always happy to talk about anything. And still is.” “I took the realm of insane fabulousness,” says Andrew. “He was normal.”

Wynton MarsalisPhoto: AP Photos

Born a year apart, they were too busy being prodigies to feud. Their mission has been bringing jazz to a wider audience: touring the world (together and separately), recording classic and inventive albums, and using film and TV in revolutionary ways. And while some in the jazz world have accused them of selling out, it doesn’t seem to faze the brothers. These days, Branford is working with his own band while Wynton celebrates his tenth year as artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Gordy won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance for Love Liza, a bittersweet comedy about a widower (played by Philip) coming to terms with his wife’s suicide. Their first major collaboration, it opens at the end of the year. “He carries the picture,” Gordy has said. “It’s great that a powerful actor sibling could work on a film written by his brother and have it actually help the powerful actor sibling.”

Frank on Malachy: “My mother’s family loved my brother, Malachy. They said he was ‘lyrical and charming,’ and it was clear that I was not. It was made plain that I was not of ‘Limerick’ and I often heard ‘You and your Northern Ireland Presbyterian hair.’ “Malachy on Frank: “A fair number of critics and some of the public blasted me for not writing the same kind of book my brother wrote, and for not having his talent. Indeed, I was blamed for not being my brother. I now pledge to all those naysayers that someday I will write Angela’s Ashes and change my name to Frank McCourt, ‘cause I’m devoted to making people happy.”

Why did Leonard Riggio appoint his younger brother, Stephen, to succeed him as CEO earlier this year? Because he didn’t trust anyone else to run the family business. “Stephen would take a bullet for his brother and for the business,” says Peter Farago, an executive who has worked for the brothers. It’s a very tight bond – perhaps more paternal than fraternal. The Brooklyn-bred brothers talk throughout the day and socialize together most weekends. Those who have worked with the Riggios say that nary a harsh word comes between them.

Say cheese:Paris and Nicky HiltonPhoto: Patrick McMullan

The Hiltons: Paris, 21, model-actress; Nicky, 19, model.
The Kluges: Samantha, 32, designer; John Jr., 19, student.
The Millers: Pia, 36, estranged wife of Christopher Getty; Marie-Chantal of Greece, 33, children’s-clothing designer; Alexandra, 30, exec at mother-in-law’s fashion house.
The Boardmans: Serena, 30, real-estate broker; Samantha, 29, first-year resident at New York Hospital.
The Lauders: Aerin, 32, and Jane, 28, employed by the company Grandma founded.
The Kleins: Andy, 36, exterminator exec, and Jeff, 32, hotelier.

The Weinsteins: Bob, 47, and Harvey, 50, founders of Miramax.
The Lees: Spike, 45, and sister Joie, 40, actress; David, 41, photographer; Cinqué, 36, actor; Chris, 43, in charge of movie memorabilia at Spike’s Brooklyn store.
Baldwin Brothers, all “actors”: Alec, 44; William, 39; Stephen, 36; and Daniel, 42.
The Culkins, all actors: Macaulay, 22; Kieran, 20; Rory, 13.
The Burnses: Actor-producer-screenwriter Edward, 34, owns Irish Twin production company with producer-screenwriter and brother Brian, 33.
The Gyllenhaals: Jake, 22, and Maggie, 25, actors.

The Hilfigers: Tommy, 51, fashion designer, and Andy, 41, fashion and music entrepreneur.
The Zabars: Saul, 75, and Stanley, 70, run Zabar’s; Eli Zabar, 59, runs E.A.T.
The McNallys: Keith, 50, and Brian, 52, both restaurateurs.
The Bronfmans: Edgar, 73, and Charles, 70, co-chairs of Seagram.
The Tishmans: Robert, 86, chairman of Tishman Speyer, and Alan, 85, chairman of Tishman Management Corp.
The Graveses: Earl, 40, president of Black Enterprise, John, 39, company lawyer, and Michael, 35, head of Pepsi distributorship.
The Forbeses: Steve, 55, Timothy, 49, Robert, 53, and Chris, 51, all run the family publishing business.

Rudolph Giuliani, 58
Robert De Niro, 59
Missy Elliott, 31
Robert Gottlieb, 71
Ivana Trump, 53
Ted Koppel, 62
John Updike, 70
Barry Manilow, 56
Jennifer Connelly, 31
Barry Sonnenfeld, 49
David Copperfield, 46
Chelsea Clinton, 22
Alicia Keys, 21

Additional reporting by David Amsden, Sarah Bernard, Lauren DeCarlo, Simon Dumenco, Meryl Gordon, Marc Malkin, Leanne Shear, Alex Williams

New York’s Power Siblings