Melanie Richards Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an American actress. Born in Manhattan to actress Tippi Hedren, she was raised mainly in Los Angeles, where she graduated from the Hollywood Professional School at age 16. In 1975, 17-year-old Griffith appeared opposite Gene Hackman in Arthur Penn's neo-noir film Night Moves. She later rose to prominence as an actor in films such as Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984), which earned her a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. Griffith's subsequent performance in the comedy Something Wild (1986) attracted critical acclaim before she was cast in 1988's Working Girl, which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her a Golden Globe.
In the 1990s, Griffith performed in a series of roles which received varying critical reception. She received Golden Globe nominations for her performances in Buffalo Girls (1995), and as Marion Davies in RKO 281 (1999), while also earning a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for her performances in Shining Through (1992), as well as receiving nominations for Crazy in Alabama (1999) and John Waters' cult film Cecil B. Demented (2000). Other credits include John Schlesinger's Pacific Heights (1990), Milk Money (1994), the neo-noir film Mulholland Falls (1996), as Charlotte Haze in Adrian Lyne's Lolita (1997), and Another Day in Paradise (1998).
She provided the voice of Margalo in Stuart Little 2 (2002), and later starred as Barbara Marx in The Night We Called It a Day (2003), and spent the majority of the 2000s appearing on such television series as Nip/Tuck, Raising Hope, and Hawaii Five-0. After acting on stage in London, in 2003, she made her Broadway debut in a revival of the musical Chicago, receiving celebratory reviews. In the 2010s, Griffith returned to film, starring opposite her then-husband Antonio Banderas in the science-fiction film Autómata (2014) and as an acting coach in James Franco's The Disaster Artist (2017).
Melanie Richards Griffith was born on August 9, 1957, in Manhattan, New York City, to actress Tippi Hedren and Peter Griffith, a former child stage actor and advertising executive. Griffith's paternal ancestry is English, as well as Welsh, Scots-Irish, Native Irish, and Scottish, while her maternal ancestry is Swedish, Norwegian, and German. Her parents separated when she was two years old, after which she relocated to Los Angeles with her mother. On February 4, 1961, Griffith's father married model and actress Nanita Greene and had two more children: Tracy Griffith, who also became an actress, and Clay A. Griffith, a set designer. Her mother married agent and producer Noel Marshall on September 27, 1964.
During her childhood and adolescent years, she lived part of the time in New York with her father and part-time in Antelope Valley, California, where her mother formed the animal preserve Shambala. Griffith appeared in advertisements and briefly worked as a child model before abandoning the career, citing extreme shyness as the reason. While attending the Hollywood Professional School, Griffith was advanced in her studies, which allowed her to skip a grade level and graduate at age 16.
1969–1979: Career beginnings and first marriage
Griffith's first onscreen appearances were as an extra in Smith! (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973). She had her first major role at age 17 in Arthur Penn's film noir Night Moves (1975), in which she portrayed a runaway teenager pursued across the United States by a private detective, portrayed by Gene Hackman. In the film, she controversially appeared onscreen nude in several scenes. Griffith's performance in Night Moves drew attention to her and she was subsequently cast in two 1975 films: the comedy Smile, playing a pageant contestant, and Stuart Rosenberg's The Drowning Pool, a thriller in which she portrayed the daughter of a Louisiana woman (played by Joanne Woodward) involved in a crime investigation. She was also named Miss Golden Globe for 1975, helping out at the Golden Globe Awards. A contemporaneous profile of Griffith in Newsweek addressed her image at the time, in which it was noted: "She has the body of a sensuous woman, the pouting, chipmunk face of a teenager, and the voice of a child–and, suddenly, she's showing them all."
While on the set of The Harrad Experiment, 14-year-old Griffith met actor Don Johnson, then 22. The two began dating, and the relationship culminated in a six-month marriage from January to July 1976. After divorcing Johnson, Griffith subsequently dated Ryan O'Neal, who was 16 years her senior. In her autobiography, A Paper Life, Tatum O'Neal alleged that Griffith dragged her into an orgy with Maria Schneider and a male hairdresser during the time of her father's relationship with Griffith.
In 1977, she had a supporting part playing a hitchhiker in the Lamont Johnson-directed sports drama One on One.
Griffith appeared in the Israeli experimental film The Garden, in which she portrayed a naked mute woman in Jerusalem whom a man mistakes for an angel. The same year, she had a supporting role in Joyride opposite Robert Carradine, in which she played a young woman who leaves California with her boyfriend, hoping to start a fishing company in Alaska.
1980–1988: Breakthrough and motherhood
Griffith appeared opposite her mother, Hedren, in the film Roar (1981), directed by her then-stepfather Noel Marshall. In the film, she portrayed the daughter of animal-keepers Madeleine (Hedren) and Hank (Marshall), whose various wild animals turn on them. Roar was a project devised by Hedren and Marshall, and has retrospectively been deemed one of the most dangerous film productions of all time. Filming of Roar had begun in 1970 and was intermittent over the following decade. On one occasion during the shoot, Griffith was mauled by a lion and had to undergo facial reconstructive surgery. Her attack and injury is visible in the finished film. Also in 1981, Griffith appeared as a Women's Army Corps recruit in the made-for-television film She's in the Army Now (1981) with Jamie Lee Curtis and Steven Bauer. Shortly after completing the film, Griffith and Bauer married.
Griffith's well-known drug and alcohol addictions temporarily stalled her career in the early 1980s, but she made a comeback at age 26 with her role as a pornographic film actor in the Brian De Palma thriller Body Double (1984). The film, although a commercial failure, earned her the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. That same year, she had a co-starring role in Abel Ferrara's thriller Fear City, playing a stripper and prostitute in Times Square being stalked by a serial killer. Griffith gave birth to her first child, Alexander Griffith Bauer, on August 22, 1985, with Bauer. The following year, she had her first starring role opposite Jeff Daniels in Jonathan Demme's comedy Something Wild (1986), playing a mysterious woman who becomes involved with a straightlaced banker on a chance meeting. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of her acting: "Griffith's performance is based not so much on eroticism as on recklessness: She is able to convince us (and Daniels) that she is capable of doing almost anything, especially if she thinks it might frighten him." Griffith's performance earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.
Griffith also starred in the speculative science fiction film Cherry 2000, which followed a business executive in the year 2017, and his relationship with a sex robot. She subsequently starred opposite Sean Bean, Tommy Lee Jones, and Sting in Mike Figgis's neo-noir Stormy Monday (1988), portraying an American woman who becomes embroiled in her ex-boss's plot to acquire a jazz club in Newcastle upon Tyne. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised Griffith's performance, writing: "The stellar Miss Griffith, with her sexy, singular blend of kittenishness and strength, is entirely at home here, making an irrevocably strong impression."