Melanie Griffith

Melanie Griffith
Griffith at the 2013 Life Ball
Born	(1957-08-09) August 9, 1957 New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1969–present
Spouse(s)	Don Johnson (m. 1976; 1989–1996) Steven Bauer (m. 1982–87) Antonio Banderas (m. 1996–2014)
Children	3; including Dakota Johnson
Parent(s)	Peter Griffith Tippi Hedren
Relatives	Tracy Griffith (half-sister)

Melanie Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an American actress. The daughter of actress Tippi Hedren and former stage actor Peter Griffith, she rose to prominence for her role in Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984), which earned her a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. Griffith's subsequent performance in Something Wild (1986) garnered critical acclaim before she was cast in 1988's Working Girl, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and won a Golden Globe.

The 1990s saw Griffith in a series of roles which received varying critical reception: she received Golden Globe nominations for her performances in Buffalo Girls (1995), and as Marion Davies in RKO 281 (1999), while also earning a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for her performances in Shining Through (1992), as well as receiving nominations for Crazy in Alabama (1999) and John Waters' cult film Cecil B. Demented (2000). Other roles include in Milk Money (1994), the neo-noir film Mulholland Falls (1996), and as Charlotte Haze in Adrian Lyne's Lolita (1997).

She later starred as Barbara Marx in The Night We Called It a Day (2003), and has appeared on the television series Nip/Tuck, Raising Hope, and Hawaii Five-0. After acting on stage in London, in 2001 she made her Broadway debut in a revival of the musical Chicago, receiving celebratory reviews that made it a box office success.

Early life

Griffith was born in New York City, to actress Tippi Hedren and Peter Griffith, a former child stage actor and advertising executive.^[1][2] Her mother's ancestry is Swedish, German, and Norwegian. Griffith's parents divorced when she was four years old, after which her father married model/actress Nanita Greene and had two more children: Tracy Griffith, who also became an actress, and Clay A. Griffith, a set designer. Her mother married agent and producer Noel Marshall, and Griffith grew up with three stepbrothers. During her childhood and adolescent years, she lived part of the time in New York with her father and part-time in Antelope Valley, California, where her mother formed the animal preserve Shambala. Griffith skipped a grade, graduating from Hollywood Professional School when she was 16 years old.^[3]

Career

Griffith in The Garden (1977)

Griffith began work at nine months of age in a commercial.^[4] She made her film debut as an extra at the age of 12 in Smith! (1969). Her first credited roles were in Smile, The Drowning Pool, and Night Moves (all 1975), in which she did racy nude scenes at age 17. She also appeared nude in the Israeli-made 1977 film Ha-Gan (The Garden). She had a supporting role in the made-for-television movie Steel Cowboy (1978).^[4] Griffith was cast as 'Melanie', the daughter of her real life mother, Tippi Hedren, in the film Roar (1981). During the filming she was attacked by a lion and had 50 stitches to her face; it was feared she would lose an eye but in the end the wound was not disfiguring.^[5]

Griffith with Robert Redford and Sônia Braga, Cannes 1988

Her first major role came in 1984 when she was cast as a porn actress in the Brian De Palma thriller Body Double. The film, although a commercial failure, earned her the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. It led to her first leading role in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986), which became a cult favorite.^[6] Griffith also starred in the science fiction film Cherry 2000, which went straight to video in 1988 and has become a cult favorite. She achieved mainstream success when Mike Nichols cast her as spunky secretary Tess McGill in the hit 1988 film Working Girl. Griffith's performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and won her the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.

Griffith's next starring role was with Matthew Modine in the urban thriller Pacific Heights (1990). She worked continuously in mainstream films throughout the 1990s, starring in features such as The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Shining Through and A Stranger Among Us (1992), Born Yesterday (1993), Milk Money (1994), Nobody's Fool (1994), Now and Then (1995), and Two Much (1996), where she co-starred with Antonio Banderas, whom she married the year the film was released.

Griffith received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in the successful TV movie Buffalo Girls (1995), alongside Anjelica Huston. In 1998 she appeared in Woody Allen's Celebrity with Kenneth Branagh and Leonardo DiCaprio. Later that year, she starred as a free-spirited heroin user in Another Day in Paradise (1998), a performance that some critics described as the best of her career.^[7]

In 1999, Griffith starred in Crazy in Alabama, a film directed by Banderas and produced by Greenmoon Productions, the company that she and Banderas formed together. In the film, Griffith played an eccentric woman who kills her husband and heads to Hollywood to become a movie star. Also in 1999, Griffith made her stage debut at the Old Vic in London, England, where she acted with Cate Blanchett in The Vagina Monologues.^[8] In the HBO made-for-TV film RKO 281, she played actress Marion Davies, and received an Emmy nomination for her portrayal.^[9]

Griffith's career cooled down in the early 2000s following her last major roles to date in the independent films Cecil B. Demented and Forever Lulu (aka Along for the Ride). In 2002, she voiced the character of Margalo the bird in Stuart Little 2. Since then, her appearances in films have been infrequent and low-profile.

In 2003, Griffith made her Broadway debut playing Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago. Untrained in song and dance, she still impressed New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley, who wrote: "Ms. Griffith is a sensational Roxie, possibly the most convincing I have seen" and "[the] vultures who were expecting to see Ms. Griffith stumble...will have to look elsewhere".^[10] Griffith's celebratory reviews made it a box office success.^[11][12][13] She returned to the stage in 2012 in a play written by Scott Caan, titled No Way Around but Through, in which she played his mother.^[14] She played Caan's mother again in 2014 in a recurring role on his television show Hawaii Five-0.

Prior to Hawaii Five-0, Griffith's television work included the short-lived WB sitcom Twins (2005–06), and the 2007 series Viva Laughlin, which was canceled after two episodes.^[15][16] Her 2012 television pilot, This American Housewife (produced by Banderas), was not picked up by Lifetime.^[14] In the interim, Griffith guest-starred on Nip/Tuck and Hot in Cleveland.

Griffith has several other films, such as Day Out of Days directed by Zoe Cassavates, and Automata, co-starring her then-husband and directed by Gabe Ibanez. She has also signed on to appear in another film Facing the Wind.^[17]

Philanthropy

Griffith supports the efforts of Children's Hospital Los Angeles helping to lead Walk for Kids, a community 5k, to raise funds as part of the hospital's community awareness efforts in support of the opening of a new state-of-the-art pediatric inpatient facility. She also participated in the hospital's 2012 Noche de Niños gala as a presenter of a Courage to Care Award.^[18]

Personal life

Griffith with then-husband Don Johnson at the APLA benefit in September 1990

At age 14, Griffith began dating Don Johnson, her mother's 22-year-old co-star in The Harrad Experiment.^[19] The relationship culminated in a six-month marriage from January to July 1976 before they divorced.^[19] In May 1982, Griffith married Steven Bauer,^[20] her co-star from the TV film She's in the Army Now. They have a son, Alexander Bauer, born on August 22, 1985. The couple divorced in 1987. Griffith later admitted to having problems with cocaine and liquor after her divorce from Bauer. "What I did was drink myself to sleep at night," she said. "If I wasn't with someone, I was an unhappy girl."^[19]

In 1988, after completing rehabilitation^[21] Griffith renewed her relationship with Johnson. They remarried in June 1989. Their daughter, Dakota Johnson, was born on October 4, 1989. They separated in March 1994,^[19] reconciled later that year, but separated again^[22] in May 1995.

Griffith with Antonio Banderas at the Shrek Forever After premiere (2010)

Griffith had fallen in love with Antonio Banderas, her married co-star from Two Much.^[23][24] After their respective divorces were finalized, Griffith and Banderas married on May 14, 1996.^[25] They have a daughter, Stella del Carmen Banderas, born on September 24, 1996.^[26]

In 2000, Griffith returned to rehab for treatment of a painkiller addiction.^[27] Her father, Peter Griffith, died at age 67 on May 14, 2001.^[26] In August 2009, Griffith returned to rehab again for what her publicist called "part of a routine plan."^[28] She had a three-month stay. In December of that year, she had surgery for skin cancer.^[29]

In June 2014, Griffith and Banderas released a statement announcing their intention to divorce "in a loving and friendly manner".^[30] According to the petition filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, the couple had "irreconcilable differences" that led to the divorce.^[31]

Griffith is a registered member of the Democratic Party.^[32]

Filmography

Film

Television

References

External links

• Melanie Griffith at the Internet Movie Database
• Melanie Griffith at the Internet Broadway Database
• Melanie Griffith at AllMovie
• Melanie Griffith at Emmys.com