American film, stage, and television actress, and film producer, who began her career in the 1970s, appearing in several independent thriller films before achieving mainstream success in the mid-1980s. Tall, blonde and voluptuous, she started as a model before her first major film role in Night Moves (1975). Her big break came in Working Girl (1988), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her a Golden Globe.
The daughter of actress Tippi Hedren and businessman Peter Griffith, Melanie grew up on the Hollywood fast track. She started acting at 14 and by 1997 had appeared in nearly 30 films. As a model, she had been the spokesperson for Revlon’s Age Defying Makeup starting in 1994.
She had an on-again-off-again romance with actor Don Johnson for years. They first started their affair on the set of The Harrad Experiment when she was a precocious 14 and she moved in with the 22-year-old actor. They married in 1976 for five months under severe odds as both were making the party scene with drugs and booze. After their divorce Griffith then married actor Steven Bauer in 1980 and they had son Alexander. That marriage ended in 1987; in June 1989 she remarried Johnson and gave birth to daughter Dakota. Griffith filed for divorce in 1994, but she and Johnson had two reconciliations before making the act final in May 1995.
With therapy and the confidence that comes with age, Griffith said, “When I was about 25, I made this conscious decision to be good in my work, and to believe in myself. And I couldn’t do that in my personal life. I always put men on a pedestal, probably because my parents were divorced when I was really little.”
She and Spanish actor Antonio Banderas met during the 1995 filming of their movie Too Much. They were immediately all over each other in public to the delight of the paparazzi, an affair that sizzled on the pages of the tabloids. When Banderas’ divorce from his wife was final, they married in London on 14 May 1996. Their daughter Stella was born on 23 September 1996 in Spain. They divorced amicably in December 2015.
On 14 November 2000, Griffith entered a rehab clinic to deal with her reliance on prescription drugs. Her father, New Mexico businessman Peter Griffith, 67, died on 14 May 2001 of complications from emphysema.
Griffith has had at least two surgical treatments to remove skin cancer from her face, in 2009 and 2018.
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