Melanie Griffith was born on August 9, 1957, in New York City to model Tippi Hedren and advertising executive Peter Griffith. Her parents’ marriage ended in 1961 and Tippi came to Los Angeles to get a new start. Tippi caught the eye of the great director Alfred Hitchcock, who gave her starring roles in Die Vögel (1963) and Marnie (1964). Tippi married her second husband, agent Noel Marshall, in 1964, and Melanie grew up with three stepbrothers. In 1965, her father married Nanita Greene Samuels, with whom he had two children: Melanie’s half-siblings Tracy Griffith and Clay A. Griffith.
Melanie also grew up with tigers and lions, as Tippi and Noel were raising them for the movie Roar – Die Löwen sind los (1981), in which the family later starred. Her career began as a model at just nine months old and she later appeared as an extra in Smith! – Ein Mann gegen alle (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973), where she fell in love with her mother’s co-star, Don Johnson. She was only… read more
Melanie Griffith was born on August 9, 1957, in New York City to model Tippi Hedren and advertising executive Peter Griffith. Her parents’ marriage ended in 1961 and Tippi came to Los Angeles to get a new start. Tippi caught the eye of the great director Alfred Hitchcock, who gave her starring roles in Die Vögel (1963) and Marnie (1964). Tippi married her second husband, agent Noel Marshall, in 1964, and Melanie grew up with three stepbrothers. In 1965, her father married Nanita Greene Samuels, with whom he had two children: Melanie’s half-siblings Tracy Griffith and Clay A. Griffith.
Melanie also grew up with tigers and lions, as Tippi and Noel were raising them for the movie Roar – Die Löwen sind los (1981), in which the family later starred. Her career began as a model at just nine months old and she later appeared as an extra in Smith! – Ein Mann gegen alle (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973), where she fell in love with her mother’s co-star, Don Johnson. She was only fourteen years old, while he was a twice-divorced 22-year-old. Tippi took a very liberal approach and allowed Melanie to move in with Don at a tender age. She skipped a grade and graduated from Hollywood Professional School when she was just sixteen. Even though Melanie didn’t like modeling, she continued to do so to pay the bills. One day, she went to meet with director Arthur Penn for what she thought was a modeling assignment. It was actually an audition for his film Die heiße Spur (1975), and Penn offered her the role of a runaway nymphet. She didn’t really want to be an actress, but Johnson encouraged her to do it. She agreed but was terrified of performing in front of the camera. Penn took a paternal interest in her, and she felt confident and gave a riveting performance, doing racy nude scenes. The film got her attention, and it immediately typecast her and led to more nymphet roles, with her beautiful nude body a permanent fixture in most of these films. She married Don Johnson when she was 18, but the union ended shortly thereafter.
Unfortunately, as her career progressed, she became increasingly dependent on drugs and alcohol, a fact well known to studio executives, who were not considering her for film roles. Melanie then turned to doing television roles, and met her second husband, Steven Bauer, on the set of Und jetzt wird sie Soldat (1981) (TV). He helped her to overcome her drug and alcohol problems and got her to take acting classes with Stella Adler in New York. The classes paid off, as director Brian De Palma cast her as a porn actress in his murder mystery Der Tod kommt zweimal (1984) and her sexy, funny performance won her rave reviews and the Best Supporting Actress Award by the National Society of Film Critics. Jonathan Demme was so impressed with her performance that he cast her in Gefährliche Freundin (1986) without even auditioning her. The film became a cult favorite, with Melanie again getting critical plaudits. The birth of her first child, Alexander, in 1985, didn’t help to save her struggling marriage, and she and Bauer divorced in 1987. Melanie’s career skyrocketed when Mike Nichols cast her in the breakthrough role of Die Waffen der Frauen (1988), a box-office hit for which she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress and won the Golden Globe Award as Best Actress in a Comedy. However, her ongoing substance abuse problems almost destroyed her career yet again, and Nichols pushed her into a rehabilitation clinic. En route to the clinic, she called Don Johnson for support, and they reconciled after her release from the clinic. She got pregnant and they remarried in 1989. Shortly after that, their daughter Dakota Johnson was born.
Now sober, Melanie concentrated on acting, but a poor choice of roles took a toil on her career. With the exception a lead role in the thriller Fremde Schatten (1990) and supporting turns in Nobody’s Fool – Auf Dauer unwiderstehlich (1994) and Now & Then – Damals und heute (1995), the films Melanie chose flopped badly, especially Fegefeuer der Eitelkeiten (1990). Even though she gave heartfelt performances in all her films, she was often miscast, with her breathy little-girl voice not helping matters in her starring roles as a spy in Wie ein Licht in dunkler Nacht (1992) and as a homicide detective going undercover in the Hassidic Jewish community in New York City in Sanfte Augen lügen nicht (1992). Her personal life was making headlines again when she left Johnson because of his own substance-abuse problems, reconciled with him briefly when he became sober, only to leave him again, this time for Antonio Banderas, her married co-star from Eine Blondine zuviel – Two Much (1995). Both she and Banderas created a scandal in 1995 with their torrid romance, and the tabloids followed their every move, including her divorce from Johnson and his divorce from wife Ana Leza. Melanie became pregnant with her third child, and she and Banderas married in 1996. Their daughter Stella Banderas was born later that year, and the notorious couple were forgiven by the public and the media.
Melanie was outstanding as a ditsy heroin addict on the run in the crime drama Ein neuer Tag im Paradies (1998), and some critics hailed her performance as the best work of her career to date; however, she failed to receive any major award nominations. She then starred in Woody Allen’s Celebrity – Schön, reich, berühmt (1998) with Leonardo DiCaprio, then the made-for-cable movie Citizen Kane – Die Hollywood-Legende (1999) (TV), in which she played actress Marion Davies, a part that garnered her Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. Greenmoon Productions, the production company that she formed with Banderas, produced several flops, such as her starring vehicle Verrückt in Alabama (1999) (directed by Banderas). As a result, mainstream film offers dried up. Melanie became dependent to pain killers, and returned to rehab in 2000. She subsequently created a website where she wrote about her struggle and recovery.
In 2003, Melanie turned to the Broadway stage and emerged with a rave review from the New York Times theater critic and also packed houses for her turn as the murderess “Roxie” in the musical “Chicago”. It renewed her confidence, as she had never sang, danced or been on the Broadway stage before. In 2005, she surprised viewers by playing a sexy mom to the title characters on the TV series “Twins” (2005). However, the series was canceled after one season. Her career took another blow when her next attempt at a TV series, “Viva Laughlin” (2007) with Hugh Jackman, was canceled after two episodes. Melanie would not appear in any film or television projects for the remainder of the decade. And in 2009, she was back in rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. She stayed for three months, and was treated for skin cancer in December that year.
Melanie has had many obstacles in her life, but she has overcome them thanks to the support of her husband Antonio Banderas, her three children, and mother Tippi Hedren. Banderas and Griffith are involved in many charities, including raising funds for Tippi’s Shambala preserve, a refuge for wild animals. —IMDb
