Councilman’s Daughter Killed in Car Crash : Accident: Holleigh Bernson, 26, an aspiring film director, dies in Griffith Park. Hal Bernson’s council colleagues close their meeting in her memory.

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson’s 26-year-old daughter died in a car crash after she lost control of her convertible and it tumbled 250 feet down a steep hillside during a late-night drive through Griffith Park, police said Tuesday.

Holleigh Rox-Anne Bernson, a second-year directing fellow at the American Film Institute, was driving her mother’s 1987 Volkswagen Cabriolet east along Observatory Drive about 10:40 p.m. Monday when the car clipped a wooden guardrail before veering off the side of the road, Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Tim McBride said.

The car landed in a ravine below the Griffith Park Observatory, and Bernson--who was wearing a seat belt--died at the scene of head injuries. No one else was hurt. McBride said police were investigating the cause of the accident, adding that neither drugs nor alcohol appeared to have played a role.

Friends told police that Bernson was returning to her home in Silver Lake from a concert in Orange County and may have taken the winding mountain road instead of a more direct route to enjoy the cool night and the waning moon.

“We just don’t know what happened,” said Hal Bernson’s press deputy, Francine Oschin.

A 1987 graduate of Chatsworth High School, Holleigh Bernson grew up in the shadow of one of the most powerful politicians in Los Angeles, but never let her father’s position affect what one relative called her “quirky, individualistic” outlook.

As an aspiring film director, Bernson worked at a variety of odd jobs between high school graduation and her acceptance at the American Film Institute two years ago. Her work there quickly earned the respect of students and instructors. She was one of eight students from among more than 100 to be invited to participate for a second year in the institute’s conservatory program.

“Everyone at AFI felt she was a talented director, with a vision and ideas to express, which makes her death all the more tragic,” AFI Director Jean Picker Firstenberg said. Bernson recently had won a scholarship for her work.

At the time of her death, Bernson was involved in post-production work on her 30-minute thesis film, “La Monja”--Spanish for “The Nun”--and planned to show it at festivals. “This film will be her legacy,” Firstenberg said.

The second of Hal Bernson’s three daughters, Holleigh Bernson was named for Holly Golightly, the Audrey Hepburn character in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” and “was very much like her,” said political consultant Paul Clarke, who had known her since she was a child. “She was a very blithe person, very much her own person.”

As a teen-ager, she changed her first and middle names from their more traditional spellings. More recently, she dyed her naturally brown hair bright orange and wore a nose ring.

“But when Hal looked at her, all he saw was Grace Kelly,” said Oschin, who described Hal Bernson as a doting father. On Tuesday, Hal Bernson and his family gathered at his Granada Hills home, accepting condolences from close friends.

The Los Angeles City Council, where Bernson’s father has represented the northwest San Fernando Valley for 16 years, closed its meeting Tuesday in her memory. Acting Council President Joel Wachs described Bernson as a “bright, talented, creative person, and it’s a terrible, terrible tragedy. . . . Our hearts go out to the family.”