With her whispery baby-doll voice and voluptuous figure, blonde, blue-eyed Melanie Griffith could easily have been typecast as bimbos or wide-eyed innocents. Instead, this savvy performer, the daughter of actors Peter Griffith and Tippi Hedren, chose to defy convention and undertake roles that demonstrated her versatility and capabilities. While her mother specialized in playing cool Hitchcock blondes (e.g., “Marnie” 1964), Griffith attempted (not always successfully) to transcend her party girl image (fueled in part by very public troubles with substance abuse). With a strong director and the right material, she could hold her own against powerhouse actors like Paul Newman and James Woods.
Griffith made her first film appearance as an extra in “The Harrad Experiment” (1973) which featured her mother and soon-to-be first husband Don Johnson. Her first role of note, though, was as a runaway heiress in “Night Moves” (1975). That same year, she displayed a light comic touch as one of the pageant contestants in the satirical “Smile”. Over the next decade, she worked less frequently, taking acting classes with Stella Adler and concentrating on her marriages to Johnson and actor Steven Bauer and motherhood. Ironically, it was a role much like those Tippi Hedren played that rejuvenated her career. Brian De Palma tapped Griffith for the pivotal role of porn actress Holly Body in his Hitchcock hommage “Body Double” (1984). Critics were pleasantly surprised by the actress’ work and coupled with her role as the mysteriously rebellious adventuress in “Something Wild” (1986), Griffith’s star was ascending. With her turn as Tess Magill, a Staten Island secretary with dreams of bettering herself (“I have a head for business and a bod for sin”) in “Working Girl” (1988), her position as a top notch comic actress was solidified, crowned by a Best Actress Oscar nomination. But bad career advice and a string of box office disappointments nearly curtailed her career.
Mixed in with such misfires as a reteaming with De Palma as the Southern mistress of a Wall Street executive in the disastrous “Bonfire of the Vanities” (1990), a NYC detective who goes undercover in the Hassidic community in “A Stranger Among Us” (1992) and the ill-advised remake of “Born Yesterday” (1993) were the occasional prestige projects like the “Hills Like White Elephants” segment of HBO’s “Women & Men: Stories of Seduction” (1990) and “Nobody’s Fool” (1994), in which she excelled as Bruce Willis’ unhappy wife who flirts with Paul Newman. Griffith also proved effective as a whorehouse madam in another rare TV excursion, the 1995 CBS miniseries “Buffalo Girls”.
Griffith was cast as a ditsy bombshell in the wannabe screwball comedy “Two Much” (which served to introduce her to future husband Antonio Banderas) before transcending the relatively limited part of Nick Nolte’s wife in “Mulholland Falls” (both 1996). Further stretching her screen persona, the actress bravely took on the role of Charlotte Haze, the mother of the nymphet “Lolita” (1997) in Adrian Lyne’s remake. Griffith, who in her youth could have played the title role, gained weight and perfectly embodied the shrill blowsy Charlotte. Although she unsuccessfully attempted to find a small screen comedy, she landed a comedic role as a needy actress willing to trade sexual favors for an interview in Woody Allen’s “Celebrity” (1998). But later that same year, Griffith delivered what is arguably her finest screen performance to date as a heroin user in “Another Day in Paradise”. Co-star (and producer James Woods) handpicked her for the part, recognizing not only her ability to portray the character but the role’s importance in repositioning her in the eyes of Hollywood. Although the production shoot was troubled, Griffith was mesmerizing as the mother figure in a band of low-rent criminals. She and Woods played off one another well, each eliciting the best in the other. If she stumbled a bit as a dizzy aspiring actress in Banderas’ directorial debut “Crazy in Alabama” (1999), Griffith once again delivered playing Marion Davies in “RKO 281″ (HBO, 1999), an exaggerated and somewhat fictionalized behind-the-scenes look at the making of the 1941 classic “Citizen Kane”. She followed that triumph with a turn as an unstable woman who seeks out an old sweetheart in “Loving Lulu” and played a movie star kidnapped by an aspiring indie filmmaker in John Waters’ darkly comic “Cecil B Demented” (both 2000).
- Born:
on 08/09/1957 in New York, New York
- Job Titles:
Actor, Model, Producer
Family
- Daughter: Dakota Mayi Johnson. born on October 4, 1989; father, Don Johnson
- Daughter: Stella del Carmen Banderas Griffith. born on September 24, 1996; father, Antonio Banderas
- Father: Peter Griffith. divorced from Tippi Hedren and married to actress Nanita Greene, by whom he has two children; died May 14, 2001 at age 67
- Half-brother: Clay Griffith. born c. 1967; mother is Nanita Greene
- Half-sister: Tracy Griffith. born c. 1965; mother is actor Nanita Greene
- Mother: Tippi Hedren. played the lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” (1963) and the title role of Hitchcock’s “Marnie” (1964)
- Son: Alexander Bauer. born in 1985; father, Steven Bauer
Significant Others
- Husband: Antonio Banderas. met on set of “Two Much” in 1995; married in London on May 14, 1996; reportedly separated December 2002
- Husband: Don Johnson. married in 1976; divorced in 1977; married for second time in 1989; met when she was 14 and he was 22; no longer together
- Husband: Steven Bauer. married in May 1982; divorced; born on December 2, 1952 in Cuba
Education
- Hollywood Professional School, Los Angeles, California
Milestones
- — Signed on to play a lawyer who manipulates men in the CBS movie “Heartless” (lensed 2004)
- 1973 Made film debut as extra in “The Harrad Experiment”, starring her mother and featuring her future first husband, Don Johnson
- 1975 Feature film acting debut, aged 17, in “Night Moves”
- 1975 Played one of the beauty contestants in the superb satire “Smile”
- 1976 TV miniseries debut, “Once an Eagle” (NBC)
- 1977 Debut as series regular in the ABC series “Carter Country”
- 1981 Starred with mother, Tippi Hedren, in “Roar” (produced by stepfather, Noel Marshall); filmed several years before release
- 1981 Took a year’s sabbatical to study acting with Stella Adler
- 1984 Returned to features as the female lead of Brian De Palma’s “Body Double”
- 1986 Breakthrough leading role in Jonathan Demme’s “Something Wild”
- 1987 Guest starred in an episode of “Miami Vice”, directed by Don Johnson, her once-and-future husband
- 1988 Received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance as a Staten Island secretary with aspirations to succeed in business in the comedy “Working Girl”, directed by Mike Nichols
- 1990 Acted opposite Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis in the disastrous screen version of “Bonfire of the Vanities”, helmed by De Palma
- 1990 Starred opposite James Woods as lovers facing an unwanted pregnancy in the “Hills Like White Elephants” segment of the HBO special “Women & Men: Stories of Seduction”
- 1991 Made first film with then-husband Don Johnson, “Paradise”
- 1992 Was unfortunately miscast as an NYC cop who goes undercover in the Hassidic community in “A Stranger Among Us”
- 1993 Undertook the role of Billie Dawn in an ill-fated remake of “Born Yesterday”
- 1994 Delivered an effective turn as Bruce Willis’ wife in “Nobody’s Fool”, also starring Paul Newman
- 1995 Co-starred with Anjelica Huston in the CBS miniseries “Buffalo Girls”
- 1996 Starred opposite future husband Antonio Banderas in the uneven comedy “Two Much”
- 1997 Played the blowsy Charlotte Haze in Adrian Lyne’s remake of “Lolita”; shown on Showtime in the USA
- 1998 Made cameo appearance as a movie star in Woody Allen’s “Celebrity”
- 1998 Made pilot for the proposed CBS sitcom “Me and Henry”; series not picked up
- 1998 Offered a rich performance as a drug addicted criminal opposite James Woods in “Another Day in Paradise”
- 1999 Cast as an aspiring actress who murders her husband in “Crazy in Alabama”, the feature directorial debut of Antonio Banderas
- 1999 Portrayed Marion Davies in the HBO movie “RKO 281″, about the making of “Citizen Kane”
- 1999 Starred as an attorney defending a rap musician accused of murder in “Shadow of Doubt” (aired on Cinemax)
- 2000 Had title role of a mentally unstable woman who seeks an old sweetheart in “Loving Lulu”
- 2000 Portrayed a veteran movie star kidnapped by a struggling independent filmmaker who forces her to star in his latest opus in “Cecil B. Demented”, written and directed by John Waters
- 2004 Cast as Eve in the film “Shade,” which is set in the world of poker hustlers; also starring Sylvester Stallone and Gabriel Byrne
- Moved with family to Los Angeles at age four
- Selected by Revlon as spokesperson for line of cosmetics aimed at women over 35 years of age
