Melanie Griffith is famous for movies such as Something Wild (1986) and Working Girl (1988, with Harrison Ford), and for her high-profile marriages to actors Don Johnson and Antonio Banderas. Griffith, the daughter of actress Tippi Hedren, started in the movies when she was a teenager, and for many years played supporting roles that exploited her sex appeal. Her Oscar nomination as best supporting actress for the 1988 film Working Girl helped secure more mature roles, but her professional career has sometimes taken a back seat to the turbulence of her romantic life. Her movies include Body Double (1984), Stormy Monday (1987, with Sting), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990, with Bruce Willis), the re-make of Lolita (1997, starring Jeremy Irons), Crazy in Alabama (1999), Shade (2003) and Have Mercy (2006). She also was a regular on the TV series Twins in 2005-06.
She married Don Johnson in 1976, when she was 18 years old; they divorced later that year. They remarried in 1989 and were divorced again in 1996. She married Banderas later in 1996. Griffith was also married to actor Steven Bauer from 1985-87... She has a son, Alexander (b. 1985) from her relationship with Bauer; a daughter, Dakota (b. 1989) from her second marriage to Johnson; and a daughter, Stella (b. 1996) with Banderas... Griffith has a tattoo reading "Antonio" on her right bicep... She is no relation to actor Andy Griffith.
Career Highlights: Working Girl, Something Wild, Body Double
First Major Screen Credit: Joyride (1977)
Biography
The daughter of onetime fashion model Tippi Hedren (Marnie) and actor Peter Griffith, Melanie Griffith witnessed her parents' divorce as a toddler. She relocated from Manhattan to Los Angeles in the custody of her mom at the age of four, when Alfred Hitchcock discovered Hedren and offered her a bid for movie stardom. Hedren soon married her second husband, film producer Noel Marshall, and relocated the entire family (including Griffith) to an Acton, California ranch, but at age 15 (c. 1972), Griffith broke out on her own. She started modeling professionally and struck up a live-in relationship with then-22-year-old Don Johnson. Thus commenced a notoriously rocky, complex romance of four years. It temporarily ended when Griffith and Johnson wed and divorced several months later. In the mean time, Griffith kick-started her acting career with promising films including the Arthur Penn-directed detective saga Night Moves (1975) and the Paul Newman mystery The Drowning Pool (1975).
Problems with drugs and drinking followed Griffith and Johnson's divorce. It all came crashing down for the rising star in 1980, when she was hit by a car on Sunset Boulevard and seriously injured, with amnesia that lasted for several days and a fractured arm. Ultimately, she did survive, and launched a comeback in the 1980s, studying acting with the preeminent Stella Adler. Griffith made a distinct impression as porn star Holly Body in Brian DePalma's thriller Body Double (1984), and two years later received a wealth of critical acclaim for her role in Something Wild, a Jonathan Demme comedy. It cast her as a reckless spirit opposite an uptight Jeff Daniels. In many ways, however, 1988 witnessed Griffith's breakthrough; that year, she appeared in Robert Redford's The Milagro Beanfield War and starred in the Mike Nichols comedy Working Girl. For her work in the latter film, as a young career woman trying to conquer the New York business world, Griffith earned an Oscar nomination and no small amount of critical respect. Unfortunately, she then endured a series of less well-received outings, including Brian DePalma's widely panned Tom Wolfe outing The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), the John Schlesinger mystery Pacific Heights (1990) and director David Seltzer's period meller Shining Through (1992).
While her acting career continued on its highs and lows, Griffith once again wed Johnson in 1989; their second union lasted until 1996. That same year, the actress married Spanish heartthrob Antonio Banderas following a much-publicized romance. She went on to do some of her best work in years in 1997 as the puffy, tragically misguided Mrs. Haze in Adrian Lyne's overlooked adaptation of Lolita. She then signed on to portray drug dealer James Woods's wife in the Larry Clark-directed addiction drama Another Day in Paradise (1998); unfortunately, the film failed to make a significant impact on critics. At about the same time, the actress portrayed a flippant movie star in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998), and a nutty aspiring actress who totes her dead husband's head around in a hat box in the Antonio Banderas-directed Crazy in Alabama in 1999. Both films received negative-to-mediocre reviews.
Unfortunately, that marked the beginning of a decline in stature for Griffith. Though she continued signing for roles, subsequent projects were of somewhat lower profile. They included participation in the documentaries Light Keeps Me Company (2000) and Searching for Debra Winger (2002), as well as a critically-praised starring turn as a Hollywood prima-donna who falls prey to a guerilla filmmaking ensemble, in John Waters's outrageous black comedy Cecil B. Demented (2000). The actress accepted roles in Eric Styles's romantic drama Tempo (2003) and director Damian Nieman's ensemble crime thriller Shade (2003); she also bowed on television as Bunny Baxter in the way-offbeat musical/thriller series Viva Laughlin (2007) on CBS, which completely failed to connect with an audience and was cancelled after three episodes. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Griffith was born in New York City, to Tippi Hedren and producer and former actor/advertising executive Peter Griffith.[1][2][3] Her parents divorced when she was four years old, after which her father remarried to model/actress Nanita Greene and had two more children, actress Tracy Griffith and set designer Clay A. Griffith. Her mother married agent and producer Noel Marshall, and Griffith grew up with three stepbrothers. During her childhood and adolescent years, she divided her time between living in New York with her father and in Antelope Valley, California, where her mother formed the animal preserve Shambala. She also skipped a grade and graduated from Hollywood Professional School when she was just 16 years old.[4][5][6]
Griffith's next role was starring in the well-received thriller Pacific Heights (1990) with Michael Keaton and Matthew Modine. Despite her success, many of Griffith's following films were poorly received, especially The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), which also starred Bruce Willis and Tom Hanks and reunited her with Body Double director Brian de Palma. Other less-notable films were Paradise (1991) and Born Yesterday (1993) (both of which co-starred Griffith's then husband Don Johnson), Shining Through (1992) and A Stranger Among Us (1992). Griffith made a minor comeback when she received good reviews for her role as a desperate housewife in the Oscar-nominated film Nobody's Fool (1994), which reunited her with Bruce Willis and Paul Newman. It was on the set of the 1996 comedy Two Much where Griffith met future husband Antonio Banderas.
Griffith appeared in the Woody Allen film Celebrity in 1998 with Winona Ryder, Leonardo DiCaprio and Charlize Theron. Later that same year, she delivered what is arguably her finest screen performance to date[7] as a ditzy heroin user in Another Day in Paradise (1998). She formed Greenmoon Productions with Antonio Banderas in 1997, which produced her starring vehicle Crazy in Alabama (1999), directed by Banderas and featuring Griffith's real-life daughters Dakota Johnson and Stella Banderas playing her daughters. Griffith's most recent mainstream film was Stuart Little 2 (2002) in which she voiced the character of Margalo. Since then, she has acted in several independent films.
Griffith currently has two feature films in production.
Television
Griffith's most notable television work includes her Golden Globe nominated performances in the TV miniseries Buffalo Girls and the HBO film RKO 281 (1999), where she played actress Marion Davies. Her portrayal of Davies also earned her an Emmy nomination. She was also seen on the short-lived The WB sitcom Twins (2005-2006), on which she played Lee, the mother of the show's main characters, played by Sara Gilbert and Molly Stanton. Her television career took a blow when her 2007 series Viva Laughlin was canceled after two episodes. Griffith's may resurrect her television career with a role on Nip/Tuck during its seventh and final season. She will play porn-star Kimber Henry's mother who, along with her boyfriend of 6 years, comes to visit her daughter from Wisconsin.[8]
Broadway career
In 1999, Griffith made her stage debut at the Old Vic in London, England, where she acted with Cate Blanchett in the Vagina Monologues.[9] Four years later, in 2003, she made her Broadway debut playing Roxie in the musical Chicago. Untrained in song and dance, Griffith still impressed New York Times theatre 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] At the same time Griffith was performing in Chicago, husband Banderas was appearing across the street in another musical, Nine.
Personal life
At the 1990 APLA benefit with Don Johnson
At age 14, Griffith began dating 22-year old actor Don Johnson who co-starred with her mother in the 1973 film, The Harrad Experiment, in which Griffith was an extra. Griffith was 18 years old when she married him in Las Vegas in January 1976. They divorced just six months later.
In September 1981, Griffith married Steven Bauer, her co-star in the TV film She's in the Army Now. They have a son, Alexander, born in August 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."[14] While on the set of Working Girl, she reconciled with first husband Don Johnson. At Johnson's insistence, Griffith checked into rehab and became sober.[14] She became pregnant, and they remarried in June 1989. Their daughter, Dakota Johnson, was born on October 4, 1989. Six years later, she left him because of his own substance-abuse problems. She later reconciled with him, only to leave him again, this time for her leading man Antonio Banderas from the film Two Much. She finalized her divorce from Johnson in February 1996, and married Banderas on May 14, 1996. Their daughter, Stella Banderas, was born on September 24, 1996. In 2000, Griffith had Banderas' first name tattooed on her right shoulder.
Griffith's daughter Dakota followed in her mother's footsteps and served as Miss Golden Globe at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards ceremony. Griffith herself was Miss Golden Globe in 1975, a title given as a launching pad to celebrity offspring breaking into show business.
In 2002, Griffith and Banderas received the Stella Adler Angel Award for their extensive charity work.[15]
Griffith has struggled with drugs and alcohol through much of her life. In 2000, she sought treatment for addiction to painkillers. She returned to rehab in August 2009.[16]
Honors
Named "Star of Tomorrow" by the Motion Picture Booker's Club (1984)
Taormina International Film Festival — Diamond Award (2000)
