Date of Birth: August 9, 1957
Place of Birth: New York, NY, USA
Sign: Sun in Leo, Moon in Aquarius
Relations: Mother: Tippi Hedren (actress); husband: Antonio Banderas; ex-husbands: Don Johnson, Steven Bauer; kids: Alexander, Dakota, Stella del Carmen
Education:Pierce College
DESPITE HER TYPECASTING as a blond bimbo, Melanie Griffith has toughed it out and proven she can act.
Her personal life hasn't been a breeze, either. When she was six, Alfred Hitchcock presented the girl with a wax replica of her mother (Hitchcockian actress Tippi Hedren) in a coffin. By age 14, she had stolen her mother's boyfriend, the then-22-year-old Don Johnson. They married when Griffith was 18 and divorced before she was 20. Three years later, she was nearly killed when a car hit her. The next year, a lion nearly clawed her face off during a film shoot. Talk about a trooper.
Griffith’s first breakthrough came in 1998’s Working Girl. She received an Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category for her portrayal of Tess McGill, opposite Sigourney Weaver. Personally, her life was a mess, and after the film wrapped, Melanie headed to detox.
Brian De Palma gave her another break for Bonfire of the Vanities in 1990. The production turned out to be one of the most hellish in film history, no thanks to Griffin's mammaries: the actress went AWOL halfway through filming, returning with considerably larger breasts. If you can bring yourself to sit through the video, it's actually quite funny how her chest grows and shrinks.
Around the same time, Griffith re-married childhood sweetheart Johnson, but once again, their divorce proceedings outlasted their marriage.
It wasn’t until the mid-90s, Griffith's personal life began to click. In 1996, she married heartthrob Antonio Banderas. Although her film career has been up and down, 1998 saw Melanie in her toughest role to date, as a junkie hooker in Larry Clark's gritty Another Day in Paradise. In 1999, Banderas directed Crazy In Alabama, in which Melanie played Lucille, a colorful, glamour-struck woman who escapes the clutches of her abusive husband and runs off to Hollywood in pursuit of stardom. The year 2000 holds plenty of the breathy queen, including Forever Lulu, Tart, and the quirky Cecil B. Demented.
Movies:
2000 Cecil B. Demented
2000 Loving Lulu
2000 Tart
1999 Crazy in Alabama
1998 Shadow of Doubt
1998 Another Day in Paradise
1998 Celebrity
1997 Lolita
1996 Mulholland Falls
1996 Two Much
1995 Now and Then
1994 Milk Money
1994 Nobody's Fool
1993 Born Yesterday
1992 Shining Through
1992 A Stranger Among Us
1991 Paradise
1990 The Bonfire of the Vanities
1990 In the Spirit
1990 Pacific Heights
1988 The Milagro Beanfield War
1988 Stormy Monday
1988 Working Girl
1987 Cherry 2000
1986 Something Wild
1984 Fear City
1984 Body Double
1981 Roar
1980 Underground Aces
1977 Ha-Gan
1977 Joyride
1977 One On One
1975 Night Moves
1975 The Drowning Pool
1975 Smile
1973 The Harrad Experiment
TV:
1999 RKO 281
1998 Me & George
1995 Buffalo Girls
1990 Women and Men: Stories of Seduction
1985 Alfred Hitchcock Presents
1981 Golden Gate
1981 She's in the Army Now
1981 The Star Maker
1978 Steel Cowboy
1978 Daddy, I Don't Like It Like This
1978-79 Carter Country
1976 Once an Eagle
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
