Melanie Griffith Biography

Actress; born on August 9, 1957, in New York, N.Y. The daughter of actress Tippi Hedren, Griffith found initial big-screen success with roles in Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984) and Something Wild (1986). She was known for her sexy image and distinct, high-pitched voice. Griffith was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for her role as a secretary in New York City trying to move ahead in the business world in Mike Nichols’s Working Girl (1988, co-starring Harrison Ford). Griffith moved in with her mother’s co-star Don Johnson when he was twenty-two and she was fourteen. The two married in 1975, when she was eighteen, and divorced a year later.

In the 1980s Griffith was involved with actor Steven Bauer, with whom she had a son, Alexander. In 1989, she embarked on a second rocky marriage to Johnson. The pair had a daughter, Dakota, before divorcing again in 1996.

In the 1990s, Griffith appeared in such films as: Pacific Heights (1990), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Shining Through (1992), Milk Money (1994), Nobody’s Fool (1994), Celebrity (1998), and Another Day in Paradise. She also starred in 1999's Crazy in Alabama, the directorial debut of her husband, Spanish actor Antonio Banderas. Griffith married Banderas in May 1996, and the couple had a daughter, Stella del Carmen. In November 2000, Griffith announced she would enter a rehab program for an addiction to painkillers. .