Melanie Griffith - Biography | HELLO!

Melanie Griffith's Early Life

Melanie Griffith was born on August 9, 1957 in Manhattan, New York City to actress and Alfred Hitchcock muse Tippi Hedren and former child actor and advertising exec Peter Griffiths. Her parents divorced when she was four and she divided her time between California with her mom (who established an animal preserve) and New York with her father.

She studied at the Hollywood Professional School, making minor appearances in advertisements and working as a child model before calling it quits to focus on school. She was advanced through her studies, allowing her to graduate at 16.

Melanie Griffith's Career

Griffith's first film role was as an extra in 1969's Smith!, and she made her first major appearance in 1975's Night Moves. After a string of films that emphasized her beauty and body above all, she received acclaim for 1984's Body Double, and received Golden Globe Award nominations for 1986's Something Wild and 1988's Working Girl, winning for the latter while also netting her lone Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

The Oscar nod represented a shift in her career, switching to mainstream well-received projects which include the miniseries Buffalo Girls (1995), Two Much (1996), Lolita (1997), Celebrity (1998), Crazy in Alabama (1999), Stuart Little 2 (2002), and The Disaster Artist (2017). She made appearances in TV shows like Hawaii Five-0, Nip/Tuck, and Hot in Cleveland. In 2003, she made her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in a run of Chicago, earning rave reviews.

Melanie Griffith's Personal Life

In 1973, a 14-year-old Griffith met then 22-year-old actor Don Johnson, and soon began dating. They wed in January 1976, but were divorced six months later. She then dated actor Ryan O'Neal, who was 16 years her senior.In 1981, she married her She's In The Army Now co-star Steven Bauer, welcoming son Alexander Griffith Bauer in August 1985. However, she and Bauer split in 1988, and she developed an addiction to alcohol and cocaine. 

Soon after completing rehab, she reconnected with Johnson, and the two remarried in 1989, welcoming daughter Dakota Johnson (also an actor) months later. After continual splits and reconciliations in the last two years of their relationship, Griffith and Johnson divorced in 1996, which is the year she married her Two Much co-star Antonio Banderas. They welcomed daughter Stella in September 1996, and during their marriage, Griffith also dealt with a bout of skin cancer, requiring facial reconstructive surgery. She and Banderas divorced in 2015, but remain close friends and co-parents.

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