Melanie Griffith was born on August 9, 1957, in New York City to model Tippi Hedren and advertising executive and sometime actor Peter Griffith . Her parents' marriage ended in 1961 and Tippi came to Los Angeles to get a new start. She caught the eye of the great director Alfred Hitchcock , who gave her starring roles in "The Birds (1963)" and "Marnie (1964)". Tippi married her second husband, agent Noel Marshall, in 1964, and Melanie grew up with three stepbrothers.
She also grew up with tigers and lions, as Tippi and Noel were raising them for the movie "The Roar (1981)", in which the family later starred. Melanie's acting career, however, began as a model at just nine months old and she later appeared as an extra in "Smith! (1969)" and "Harrad Experiment (1973)", where she fell in love with her mother's co-star, Don Johnson . She was only 14 years old, while he was a twice-divorced 22-year-old. Tippi took a very liberal approach and allowed Melanie to move in with Don at a tender age. Even though Melanie didn't like modeling, she continued to do it to pay bills, when she went to meet with director Arthur Penn for what she thought was a modeling assignment. It was actually an audition for his film "Night Moves (1975)", in which Melanie would play a runaway nymphet. She didn't really want to be an actress, but Don encouraged her to do it. She agreed, but was terrified of performing in front of the camera. Penn took a paternal interest in her and she felt confident and gave a riveting performance, doing racy nude scenes. It immediately typecast her and led to more nymphet roles, with her beautiful nude body a permanent fixture in most of these films. She also married Johnson, but it ended shortly afterwards, possibly because her early movie success outshone his.
Unfortunately, as her career progressed, she became increasingly dependent on drugs and alcohol and soon found that studio executives weren't considering her for film roles anymore. She started doing television work, where she met her second husband, Steven Bauer, on the set of the TV movie "She's in the Army Now (1981) (TV)". He helped her to overcome her drug and alcohol problems and got her to take acting classes with Stella Adler in New York. The classes paid off, as director Brian De Palma cast her as a porno actress in his murder mystery "Body Double (1984)" and her sexy, funny performance won her rave reviews the Best Supporting Actress Award by the National Society of Film Critics. Jonathan Demme was so impressed with her performance that he gave her the title role in "Something Wild (1986)" without even auditioning her. The film became a cult favorite, with Melanie again getting critical plaudits.
The birth of her first child, Alexander, in 1985, didn't help to save her struggling marriage, and she and Bauer divorced shortly thereafter. Melanie reconciled briefly with first husband Don Johnson, and he directed her in a guest appearance on his show "The "Miami Vice" (1984)" in 1987, before they again went their separate ways. Melanie's career skyrocketed when Mike Nichols cast her in the title role of "Working Girl (1988)", a box-office hit for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress and won the Golden Globe Award as Best Actress in a Comedy. However, her ongoing substance abuse problems almost destroyed her career yet again, and Nichols pushed her into a rehabilitation clinic. En route to the clinic she called ex-husband Johnson for support, and they reconciled after her release from the clinic. She got pregnant and they remarried in 1989, and soon thereafter their daughter Dakota Johnson was born. A sober Melanie concentrated on her film career, but the films she chose often flopped badly, especially "Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)". Even though, she gave heartfelt performances in all her films, she was often miscast, with her breathy little-girl voice not helping matters in her role as a spy in "Shining Through (1992)" and as a homicide detective going undercover in the Hassidic Jewish community in New York City in "Stranger Among Us, A (1992)".
She made a minor comeback with "The Nobody's Fool (1994)", reuniting her with Bruce Willis, her co-star in "Bonfire", and Paul Newman , her co-star from "Drowning Pool (1975)". But her personal life was making headlines again, as she left Johnson because of his own substance-abuse problems, reconciled with him briefly when he became sober, only to leave him again, this time for Antonio Banderas, her married co-star from "Two Much (1995)". Both she and Banderas created a scandal in 1995 with their torrid romance, and the tabloids followed their every move, including her divorce from Johnson and his divorce from wife Ana Leza. Melanie became pregnant with her third child, and she and Antonio married in 1996. Their daughter Stella was born, and the notorious couple were forgiven by the public and the media. Melanie won strong reviews in independent films like "Another Day in Paradise (1998)" and the made-for-cable TV movie "RKO 281 (1999) (TV)", in which she played actress Marion Davies, a part that garnered her an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actress. But Melanie became dependent to pain killers, and wrote about her struggle and recovery in her journal on her official website. Her films were flopping badly again, including "Crazy in Alabama (1999)", directed by Banderas.
In 2003 she turned to the Broadway stage and emerged with a rave review from the "New York Times" theater critic and packed houses for her turn as the murderess Roxie in the musical "Chicago". It renewed her confidence, as she had never sang, danced or been on the Broadway stage before. She also surprised many people with her lasting marriage to Banderas, as they have been together for more than a decade now. Both of them are involved in many charities, including raising funds for her mother Tippi Hedren's Shambala preserve, a refuge for wild animals.
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