Melanie Griffith, now 66, is the link that holds together one of Hollywood’s greatest family dynasties. She’s the only daughter of the iconic Tippi Hedren, who’s best known for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and the proud mother of 34-year-old Dakota Johnson of the Fifty Shades film franchise.
Still a child, Griffith landed a role as an extra in 1973’s The Harrad Experiment, a film starring her mother and future husband Don Johnson, a 22-year-old whom she formed an instant connection.
When the young star was only 17, she landed her first major role in the 1975 film Night Moves, that also starred Gene Hackman and James Woods.
“She’s always been a young filly at the gate,” Hedren, 94, told Newsweek in 1975. “She can’t wait to get into the race.”
Her impressive performance landed the 17-year-old two more films, Smile and The Drowning Pool where she played “a provocative Lolita giving the come‑on to Paul Newman.”
“She has the body of a sensuous woman, the pouting, chipmunk face of a teenager and the voice of a child,” Newsweek writes of Griffith.
The next year, Griffith and Johnson were married and divorced.
Living with lions
It was in 1981 when Griffith was awarded the opportunity to work again with her mom, on the film Roar that tells the story of big cats turning on the family of a zoologist in Africa.
Noel Marshall (the Exorcist) was the writer, director and producer, and turned Roar into a family affair. The movie was filmed over 11 years, with his family – wife Hedren, stepdaughter Griffith and his two sons – living in a home with more than 100 untrained wild animals.
Intended to be a comedy, it instead became a horror for 70 of the cast and crew members who were attacked by the animals, earning it the label of “the most dangerous films ever made.”
A cinematographer needed 200 stitches to reattach part of his scalp, Hedren was tossed off an elephant’s back and broke her leg and Griffith, who played the daughter of her real-life mom, needed facial reconstructive surgery after she became cat chow for a lion whose powerful jaws clamped her head.
Respected actor
Demonstrating her resilience, Griffith recovered from the trauma and over the next decade she became a mother to Alexander Bauer and a celebrated actor with Golden Globe nominations for her appearances in 1984’s Body Double and in the comedy thriller Something Wild (1986).
The real applause came when she starred in Working Girl, the 1988 smash hit where she stars alongside Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver. Griffith won her first Golden Globe for her performance in the romantic comedy and earned her first Oscar nomination.
“It changed everything,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “Everybody knew who I was all of a sudden, and I got a lot of jobs, and I never stopped working until I stopped working.”
Unfortunately, her personal life wasn’t as successful as her career.
Griffith, who at the time of her Academy nod was twice divorced, rekindled her past romance with Johnson.
The couple was remarried in 1989 and had their first daughter Dakota, who was born the same year.
‘Lucky to be alive’
But history repeated itself and Griffith and Johnson divorced in 1996, the same year she married Spanish stud Antonio Banderas.
The couple, who were married until 2015, share daughter Stella Banderas.
Griffith told Porter (through USA Today) her relationship with Banderas ended because “I personally got stuck and I won’t let that happen again. I want to enjoy life, I want to do whatever I want to do.”
And, she was enjoying life a little too much.
In the same interview, the Bonfire of the Vanities star candidly shared she was struggling with substance and alcohol addiction.
Describing herself as “an addictive personality,” Griffith said she’s “lucky to be alive.”
“I was never as bad as some people I knew, shooting heroin and stuff. But I did do a lot of drinking and cocaine. I just thought I was having a good time.”
The Broadway star checked into rehab in 1998, 2000 and again in 2009.
Filled with regrets
As Griffith aged, fans watched her dramatic transformations. Some changes were natural, others a result of plastic-surgery choices, for which she’s taken some heat.
Initially pleased with the results the High Note star admits she was unaware of how drastically her cosmetic surgeries “she had over 20 years ago” changed her face.
And the online population was quick to share their opinions on her altered look.
“I never would have known this was Melanie Griffith. She’s beautiful but unrecognizable. Sad,” writes one fan.
A second user shares, “Melanie Griffith has had that level of plastic surgery that renders one unrecognizable as who they once were.”
Motivated by comments to see in herself what others saw, Griffith started to dissolve the fillers.
“I didn’t [realize] until people started saying, ‘Oh my god, what has she done?!’ I was so hurt,” she recalled. “I went to a different doctor, and he started dissolving all of this s**t that this other woman doctor had put in. Hopefully, I look more normal now.”
Her fans say she “Looks great. Not like a monster, no fillers needed.”
Other praise her natural beauty.
“She looks much prettier and like when she was younger,” shares a second while another adds,“Beautiful nothing beats natural.”
