She spent much of her childhood watching television and old Hollywood movies, from which she learned to impersonate her favorite actresses such as Joan Bennett and Kim Novak.
"[9] After coming out publicly, Darling would take a short cab ride to the Long Island Rail Road station, avoiding the attention of neighbors she would receive by walking to the train.
[2] In Manhattan, she would refer to her family home at 79 First Avenue in Massapequa Park as her "country house", and spent time in Greenwich Village, meeting people through Seymour Levy on Bleecker Street.
According to Bob Colacello, Darling took this name in 1963/1964 after she started going to gay bars in Manhattan and visiting a doctor on Fifth Avenue for hormone injections.
The day after the celebrity preview, a group of women carrying protest signs demonstrated outside the cinema against the film, which they thought was anti-women's liberation.
Darling's attempt at breaking into mainstream movies, by campaigning for the leading role in Myra Breckinridge (1970), led to rejection and bitterness.
Her theatre credits include two Jackie Curtis plays, Glamour, Glory and Gold (1967) and Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned (1971).
Vain Victory was directed by Curtis at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in May/June 1971, and featured many other performers from Warhol's Factory, including Curtis, Ondine, Tally Brown, Mario Montez, Samuel Adams Green, Mary Woronov, Francesco Scavullo, Jay Johnson, Holly Woodlawn, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Eric Emerson, and Warhol himself.
She starred in the 1973 revival of The White Whore and the Bit Player, a 1964 play by Tom Eyen, at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.
The production was bilingual, called The White Whore and the Bit Player/La Estrelle y La Monja, and directed by Manuel Martin Jr.
[15] As a review of the play stated, "With her teased platinum hair and practiced pouts, Miss Darling looks like her character and resolutely keeps her acting little-girl-lost.
"[16] Darling died of lymphoma on March 21, 1974, aged 29, at the Columbus Hospital division of the Cabrini Health Care Center.
[8][17][18] In a letter written on her deathbed and intended for her friends at the Factory, including Warhol, Darling wrote, "Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life ...
The documentary features archival film and video footage, photographs, personal papers, archival audio interviews with Tennessee Williams, Valerie Solanas, Jackie Curtis and Darling's mother, as well as contemporary interviews with Holly Woodlawn, Ruby Lynn Reyner, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, Julie Newmar, Peter Beard, and Taylor Mead.