Melanie Griffith – Biography – IMDb
Overview (3)
Mini Bio (1)
Family (4)
Trade Mark (1)
Breathy, little girl voice
Trivia (59)
Her mother, Tippi Hedren , recently stated that the miniature doll of Hedren given to Melanie by Alfred Hitchcock was not intended to be a prank by the director. He merely wanted to give Melanie a beautiful doll with her mother’s image, but it happened that the doll was in a wooden box. When Melanie received the gift, she freaked out and became upset thinking that it was indeed meant to be her mother in a coffin.
Checked into a Marina Del Rey, California hospital to help her scale back on the use of painkillers she had been prescribed for a neck injury. [November 2000]
In 1980, she went to a movie and dinner with Ricci Martin (son of Dean Martin ; not to be confused with Ricky Martin , who’s a friend). Upon leaving La Dome, a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, a car ran through the crosswalk and hit Melanie. The front of the car struck her hip in mid-stride, whiplashing her head back into the windshield. As the car screeched to a stop, Melanie catapulted more than a dozen feet forward to the curbside, hitting with great force. Melanie was rushed to a hospital. To this day, Melanie still experiences pain from that accident.
Claims that it was love at first sight when she met her husband Antonio Banderas on the set of Two Much (1995). He had sprinted out of his trailer like a starstruck schoolboy to greet her on her first day on the set. Excited and nervous, the first thing he asked her was how old she was. She cursed, laughed, and then finally answered that she was 37. They stayed together for nearly 20 years. In 2018 (4 years after their divorce), Banderas publicly declared, “I will love her until the day I die,” to which Griffith also publicly responded, “I will always love him and he will always love me. We had a great 20 years together.”.
She has three homes: Los Angeles, Aspen and Marbella, Spain.
Coincidentally, she bears the same first name as her mother Tippi Hedren ‘s character, Melanie Daniels, in The Birds (1963).
Was eighteen when she married Don Johnson for the first time. He was eight years older than she, and they met on the set of her mother’s film The Harrad Experiment (1973) in the spring of 1972 when she was 14.
Replaced Madonna for the part of Marion Davies in RKO 281 (1999) after Madonna left the project because it had been scaled down from a feature to a made-for-cable film.
Her son, Alexander Bauer (born in 1985), is the godson of Warren Beatty . She first met Beatty over a decade earlier when she auditioned for his film The Parallax View (1974). She didn’t get the role but their friendship lasted, even though their brief 1970s romance ended. She is also friends with Beatty’s wife Annette Bening and his sister Shirley MacLaine
Her father had English, as well as Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Scots-Irish/Northern Irish ancestry. Her mother is of one half Swedish, one quarter German, and one quarter Norwegian, descent.
Goes through two boyfriends in Working Girl (1988). As the film begins, she is in a relationship with Alec Baldwin , but at the end, she is in a relationship with Harrison Ford . Both Baldwin and Ford have played Jack Ryan in adaptations of the Tom Clancy novels.
First “Miss Golden Globe” to win a Golden Globe Award herself.
She and her daughter Dakota Johnson are the only mother-daughter couple to be “Miss Golden Globe”.
While in Washington, D.C. addressing the senate on Arts funding, she fell asleep twice during a speech by her host Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham. She apologized citing jet-lag as her reason for snoozing.
Melanie said that fans sometimes confuse her with actress Meg Ryan , whom she admires. She would sign Meg Ryan’s name so as not to disappoint the fans. Ryan said the same thing happened to her where fans thought she was Melanie.
Checked into the Cirque Lodge in Utah for rehab treatments. Same place where Kirsten Dunst and Lindsay Lohan spent time in recent years. [August 2009]
In August 2000, she held a live ‘ChitChat’ on her website with Dr. Judith Reichman to discuss her personal efforts to become pregnant. When Reichman wrote on the forum that smoking is toxic to a woman’s ovaries and causes earlier menopause by an average of two years, Melanie replied “I honestly didn’t know any of that.” She said she wanted a fourth child more than anything and was trying “every day” to conceive.
Underwent surgery for the early stages of skin cancer in December 2009.
Her mother was 22 while her father was only 18 when they married in 1952. In her 2016 memoir, Tippi wrote, that upon reflection, that they were too young to get married.
She was named “Star of Tomorrow” by the Motion Picture Bookers Club in 1984.
In a 2002 interview with More magazine, Melanie admitted giving marijuana to her 16-year-old son Alexander Bauer, because she thought it would be better for him to smoke it at home than to go out on the street and get something that could kill him. Her rationale backfired and she had to put Alexander in a 12-step program. She vowed not to let the same happen to her other children. Her daughter Dakota Johnson saw a therapist as a teenager, because of emotional issues with her parents, who have battled substance abuse.
Gave birth to her 1st child at age 28, a son Alexander Griffith Bauer on August 22, 1985. Child’s father is her now ex-2nd husband, Steven Bauer
Gave birth to her 2nd child at age 32, a daughter Dakota Mayi Johnson (aka Dakota Johnson ) on October 4, 1989. Child’s father is now ex-3rd husband, Don Johnson
Gave birth to her 3rd child at age 39, a daughter Stella del Carmen Banderas Griffith (aka Stella Banderas ) on September 24, 1996. Child’s father is her now estranged 4th husband, Antonio Banderas
Filed for divorce from her 4th husband of 18 years Antonio Banderas . [June 2014]
In her divorce settlement with Antonio Banderas , she got the house in Aspen and they sold their L.A. mansion and split the profits. Melanie receives $65,000 monthly spousal support from Antonio.
$75,000 was taken out of her paycheck for Working Girl (1988) when she showed up to the set heavily intoxicated and unable to say her lines coherently. The money was used to fund the reshoot of that day’s scenes.
By her own admission, she drank alcohol when she was 10. Her father Peter Griffith was an alcoholic, as was his father.
Her childhood friend is Patricia Nedd , known as Patsy. Melanie backed out of her family’s film Roar (1981) because she was afraid that one of the big cats might hurt her. So her real-life mother Tippi Hedren cast Patsy in Melanie’s role and shot several scenes. Then, Melanie changed her mind and decided that she wanted her old role back. Tippi and her then-husband Noel Marshall replaced Patsy and re-shot her scenes with Melanie. Melanie did get hurt in the film, and had to have reconstruction surgery, but she came back and finished the film.
Was treated for skin cancer recurrence recently, she underwent treatment to have basal cell carcinoma removed from her nose. [September 2017]
Pulled out of The Hot Flashes (2013) in the midst of filming due to creative differences and was replaced by Virginia Madsen
Over dinner at Italian restaurant Cecconi’s in April 2009, Salma Hayek freaked out when Melanie smoked in the presence of her 18-month-old baby girl Valentina. Instantly, Salma insisted that Melanie smoke outside or douse her cigarette pronto. Melanie snapped that Salma needed to lighten up her parenting technique, and insisted the fumes wouldn’t waft anywhere near her tyke’s tiny nose.
Has 3 known tattoos: “Antonio” encircled in a heart on her arm; yellow pear on her ass; pot leaf on her ankle.
On May 2, 1971 when Melanie lived on Knobhill Drive in Los Angeles, California with her family animal trainer Ron Oxley brought his full grown African male lion Neal to live with them and they became bedmates.
A physician gave her family his four week old African male lion cub Casey and he would snuggle up to Melanie in her bed while she slept.
Returned to work seven months after giving birth to her son Alexander to begin filming Something Wild (1986).
Returned to work three months after giving birth to her daughter Dakota Johnson to begin filming Pacific Heights (1990).
Revealed in 2018 that she once hit on Working Girl (1988) co-star Alec Baldwin but he rejected her advances. They’ve remained friendly over the years and Alec gave an interview for Melanie’s episode of Biography (1987).
Favorite brand of cigarette: Benson & Hedges.
Alumna of Stella Adler Studio of Acting.
Born at 11:49 PM (EDT).
Personal Quotes (17)
[about her work with James Woods ] It’s kind of like being pregnant. You know, you go through the initial joy of it. Then you go through wanting it to be over. And then you’re finished with it and you forget how bad it was.
There’s a bit of a stripper in every woman.
I don’t walk around with fear. I walk around with strength. I believe in cause and effect.
I don’t think I’m beautiful. When I look in the mirror, I just see me – and, I’m pretty used to me.
Antonio is the best. He is compassionate and humble.
Angelina Jolie may get him [husband Antonio Banderas ] in bed for eight hours on a movie set, but I get him in bed every day.
[on being typed as a sex symbol] I hope not! I don’t want to be — I’ve done enough parts like that. I can’t say I won’t do more, but I really want to do a variety of roles.
I would just like to be able to give to people through acting. If I can entertain people by being somebody else and allow somebody to feel something, then that makes me feel good.
I like smoking! I mean, God, I quit everything else, can’t I smoke?
[on researching the Holocaust for her film, Shining Through (1992)] I didn’t know that 6 million Jews were killed. That’s a lot of people… until I started researching the movie I didn’t know it was that many people. I thought it was like in the hundreds of thousands. I didn’t realize it was 6 million people. What I was trying to say was I think a lot of people don’t know it was that severe. I wasn’t born during the war. I was born in ’57… but I think a lot of people don’t know.
[on Bruce Willis ] I think he’s pretty damn near perfect except for the Republican thing.
[on being hit by a car at 23] God’s way of telling me to slow down.
[when Demi Moore went to rehab] I think about Demi all the time. Please send her love and kindness! She is an amazing goddess. Send positive thoughts.
[on Mike Nichols ] He saved my ass.
By the time we were 14, half of my girlfriends had had abortions.
It’s a scary thing when you’re an actress and you depend on your face for work.
Alec Baldwin is handsome and charming, and I just had such a crush on him. But he wouldn’t go there with me. I was like, ‘Oh come on, have a romance with me!’ But no, Alec said, ‘I can’t do this with people I work with.’ He’s a sweetheart.