Melanie Griffith

Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith at Cannes in 2000
Born	Melanie Richards[citation needed] Griffith (1957-08-09) August 9, 1957 (age 54) New York City, New York, United States
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1969–present
Spouse	Don Johnson (1976; 1989-1996, divorced) Steven Bauer (1981-1987, divorced) Antonio Banderas (1996-present)
Children	Alexander Bauer Dakota Johnson Stella Banderas
Parents	Peter Griffith (deceased) Tippi Hedren
Relatives	Tracy Griffith (half-sister) Clay A. Griffith (half-brother)

Melanie Richards Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl. She is the daughter of actress Tippi Hedren, and is married to actor Antonio Banderas.

Early life

Griffith was born in New York City to actress Tippi Hedren and producer, former actor, and advertising executive Peter Griffith.^[1][2] Her parents divorced when she was four years old, after which her father married 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 16 years old.^[3]

Career

Griffith began work at just nine months old in a commercial^{[citation needed]} and later became an extra on Smith! (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973). In 1975, she played her first major roles in Smile, The Drowning Pool, and Night Moves, in which she did racy nude scenes at age 17.

Griffith's career gained momentum in 1984 when she played a porn star in the Brian De Palma thriller Body Double. The film won her the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress, and led to her starring role in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986), which became a cult favorite.^{[citation needed]} 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 role was starring in the thriller Pacific Heights (1990) with Michael Keaton and Matthew Modine. Many of Griffith's following films were poorly received,^{[citation needed]} 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 films were Paradise (1991), A Stranger Among Us (1992), Born Yesterday (1993), Milk Money (1994), and Now and Then (1995). Griffith received good reviews for her role as a desperate housewife in the Oscar-nominated film Nobody's Fool (1994),^{[citation needed]} which reunited her with Bruce Willis and Paul Newman. Griffith met future husband Antonio Banderas on the set of the 1996 comedy Two Much. Griffith received a Golden Globe nomination in the TV miniseries Buffalo Girls (1995).

Griffith appeared in the Woody Allen film Celebrity in 1998 with Winona Ryder, Leonardo DiCaprio and Charlize Theron. Later that same year, she starred as a ditzy heroin user in Another Day in Paradise (1998). Some critics wrote that it was the best performance of her career.^[4] 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. In 1999, Griffith made her stage debut at the Old Vic in London, England, where she acted with Cate Blanchett in the Vagina Monologues.^{[citation needed]} In the HBO film RKO 281 (1999), she played actress Marion Davies. Her portrayal of Davies also earned her an Emmy^[5] nomination. 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.^{[citation needed]}

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".^[6] Griffith's celebratory reviews made it a box office success.^[7][8][9]

She starred on the short-lived The WB sitcom Twins (2005–2006). Her career took a blow when her 2007 series Viva Laughlin, co-starring Hugh Jackman, was canceled after two episodes.^{[citation needed]} Griffith appeared on television in Nip/Tuck during its sixth and final season in 2010.^[10]

Personal life

At the 1990 APLA benefit with Don Johnson

Griffith with Antonio Banderas at the Shrek Forever After premiere

At age 14, Griffith began dating 22-year old actor Don Johnson who co-starred with her mother in The Harrad Experiment, in which Griffith was an extra. The relationship culminated in a six-month marriage in 1976. Tatum O'Neal has alleged in her 2004 autobiography that around that time, she (then 12) and Griffith (then 18) participated in an opium-fueled orgy in a Paris hotel room.^[11][12]

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 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."^[13]

She checked into rehab in 1988.^[13] During this time, she reunited with Johnson, became sober and pregnant. They remarried in June 1989. Their daughter, Dakota Johnson, was born on October 4, 1989. They separated in June 1994,^[14] reconciled later that year but separated again in May 1995.^[15] They divorced in 1996.

Griffith and Antonio Banderas began a relationship in May 1995 when they began filming Two Much.^[16] The couple has been married since May 14, 1996. Their daughter, Stella del Carmen Banderas Griffith, was born on September 24, 1996. In 2000, Griffith had her husband's first name "Antonio" inside a heart tattooed on her right shoulder. In 2002, the couple received the Stella Adler Angel Award for their extensive charity work.^[17]

Her father, Peter Griffith, died at age 67 on May 14, 2001.^[18]

In 1988, Griffith sought treatment for addiction to painkillers and alcohol after the filming of Working Girl, and she went into rehab in 2000 for a painkiller addiction.^[19] She returned to rehab in August 2009 for substance abuse problems.^[20] She left three months later and underwent surgery for skin cancer in December 2009.^[21]

Discussing Griffith’s treatment in rehab, Banderas said in April 2010, “The whole family took part, Stella included. I was there three times a week at a stretch, and we participated in group therapy with our daughter. It strengthened our relationship in many ways. We participated very directly, all of us." Griffith’s son Alexander and daughter Dakota were there, as was her former stepson, Jesse Johnson, and Griffith's mother, Tippi Hedren.^[22]

Griffith recently started up a non-profit organization benefitting burned children. The point of the organization to replace all of their skin with real or almost-real skin.

Honors

• Named "Star of Tomorrow" by the Motion Picture Booker's Club (1984)
• Taormina International Film Festival — Diamond Award (2000)
• Cannes Film Festival — Lifetime Achievement Award (2001)

Filmography

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Melanie Griffith

• Melanie Griffith at the Internet Movie Database
• Melanie Griffith at the Internet Broadway Database
• Melanie Griffith at AllRovi
• Melanie Griffith at Yahoo! Movies
• Griffin's weblog
• Melanie Griffith at Emmys.com