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Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith at Cannes in 2000
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1969–present
Spouse(s)	Don Johnson (1976; 1989-1996) Steven Bauer (1981-1987) Antonio Banderas (1996-present)

Melanie Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl. She is the daughter of actress Tippi Hedren, and the wife of actor Antonio Banderas.

Early life

Griffith was born in New York City, to Tippi Hedren and producer and former actor/advertising executive Peter Griffith. Her parents divorced when she was four years old, after which her father remarried to model/actress Nanita Greene and had two more children, actress Tracy Griffith and set designer Clay A. Griffith. Her mother married agent and producer Noel Marshall, and Griffith grew up with three stepbrothers. During her childhood and adolescent years, she divided her time between living in New York with her father and in Antelope Valley, California, where her mother formed the animal preserve Shambala. She also skipped a grade and graduated from Hollywood Professional School when she was 16 years old.

Career

Griffith began work at just nine months old in a commercial and later became an extra on Smith! (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973). In 1975 she played her first major roles in Smile, The Drowning Pool, and Night Moves, in which she did racy nude scenes at age 17. This drew attention to her and she was typecast in sexy nymphet roles in later movies such as One on One.

Griffith's career gained momentum in 1984 when she played a porn star in the Brian De Palma thriller Body Double. The film won her the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress, and led to her starring role in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986), which became a cult favorite. She achieved mainstream success when Mike Nichols cast her as a spunky secretary named Tess McGill in the hit 1988 film Working Girl, with Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack. Griffith's performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and won her the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.

Griffith's next role was starring in the well-received thriller Pacific Heights (1990) with Michael Keaton and Matthew Modine. Despite her success, many of Griffith's following films were poorly received, especially The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), which also starred Bruce Willis and Tom Hanks and reunited her with Body Double director Brian de Palma. Other less-notable films were Paradise (1991), Born Yesterday (1993) (both of which co-starred Griffith's then husband Don Johnson), Shining Through (1992), A Stranger Among Us (1992), and Now and Then (1995) with Demi Moore. Griffith received good reviews for her role as a desperate housewife in the Oscar-nominated film Nobody's Fool (1994), which reunited her with Bruce Willis and Paul Newman. It was on the set of the 1996 comedy Two Much where Griffith met future husband Antonio Banderas. Griffith received a Golden Globe nomination in the TV miniseries Buffalo Girls.

Griffith appeared in the Woody Allen film Celebrity in 1998 with Winona Ryder, Leonardo DiCaprio and Charlize Theron. Later that same year, she starred as a ditzy heroin user in Another Day in Paradise (1998). Some critics wrote that it was the best performance of her career. She formed Greenmoon Productions with Antonio Banderas in 1997, which produced her starring vehicle Crazy in Alabama (1999), directed by Banderas and featuring Griffith's real-life daughters Dakota Johnson and Stella Banderas playing her daughters. In 1999, Griffith made her stage debut at the Old Vic in London, England, where she acted with Cate Blanchett in the Vagina Monologues. In the HBO film RKO 281 (1999), she played actress Marion Davies. Her portrayal of Davies also earned her an Emmy nomination. Griffith's most recent mainstream film was Stuart Little 2 (2002) in which she voiced the character of Margalo. Since then, she has acted in several independent films.

In 2003, she made her Broadway debut playing Roxie in the musical Chicago. Untrained in song and dance, Griffith still impressed New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley, who wrote: "Ms. Griffith is a sensational Roxie, possibly the most convincing I have seen" and " vultures who were expecting to see Ms. Griffith stumble...will have to look elsewhere". Griffith's celebratory reviews made it a box office success. At the same time Griffith was performing in Chicago, husband Banderas was appearing across the street in another musical, Nine.

She starred on the short-lived The WB sitcom Twins (2005–2006). Her career took a blow when her 2007 series Viva Laughlin, co-starring Hugh Jackman, was canceled after two episodes. Griffith appeared on television in Nip/Tuck during its seventh and final seasonin 2010.

Personal life

At age 14, Griffith began dating 22-year old actor Don Johnson who co-starred with her mother in the 1973 film, The Harrad Experiment, in which Griffith was an extra. Griffith was 18 years old when she married him in Las Vegas in January 1976. They divorced just six months later.

In September 1981, Griffith married Steven Bauer, her co-star in the TV film She's in the Army Now. They have a son, Alexander, born in August 1985. The couple divorced in 1987. Griffith later admitted to having problems with cocaine and liquor after her divorce from Bauer. "What I did was drink myself to sleep at night," she said. "If I wasn't with someone, I was an unhappy girl."

While on the set of Working Girl, she reconciled with Johnson. At his insistence, Griffith checked into rehab and became sober. She became pregnant during this time, and they remarried in June 1989. Their daughter, Dakota Johnson, was born on October 4, 1989. She left him six years later because of his own substance-abuse problems. She later reconciled with him, only to leave him again, for her leading man Antonio Banderas from the film Two Much. The pair divorced in February 1996.

Griffith and Banderas have been married since May 14, 1996. Their daughter, Stella Banderas, was born on September 24, 1998. In 2000, Griffith had Banderas' first name tattooed on her right shoulder with a heart shape around it. In 2002, Griffith and Banderas received the Stella Adler Angel Award for their extensive charity work.

Griffith's daughter Dakota followed in her mother's footsteps and served as Miss Golden Globe at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards ceremony. Griffith herself was Miss Golden Globe in 1975, a role usually given to the offspring of a celebrity, often as a launching pad to break into show business.

Griffith has struggled with drugs and alcohol through much of her life. In 2000, she sought treatment for addiction to painkillers. She returned to rehab in August 2009, staying for two months.

In December 2009, she underwent surgery for skin cancer.

Honors

• Named "Star of Tomorrow" by the Motion Picture Booker's Club (1984)
• Taormina International Film Festival — Diamond Award (2000)
• Cannes Film Festival — Lifetime Achievement Award (2001)

Filmography

References

1. Melanie Griffith Biography (1957-)
2. Tracy Griffith Biography (1965-)
3. Ancestry of Melanie Griffith
4. http://www.melaniegriffith.com/magic_door/chitchat/chitchat_archive_feb2000.html
5. http://www.squareone.org/HPS/
6. http://www.geocities.com/hpsalumni/hps/
7. http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800018809/bio
8. TRANSCRIPT (Melanie's Romance Chat, February 10, 2000, 9PM EST)
9. The New York Times http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?id=1077011419481&html_title=&tols_title=CHICAGO+(PLAY)&byline=%20By+BEN+BRANTLEY+&pdate=20030804. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
10. B.O. rises; 'Chi' SRO Broadway Grosses
11. Bubbly B.O. perf. (Analysis).(Melanie Griffith stars in "Chicago")(Brief Article)
12. Pogrebin, Robin (September 18, 2003). "A Long Shot In 'Chicago' Pays Off; For Melanie Griffith, Last Laugh Is Sweet". The New York Times. Retrieved April 9, 2010.
13. "Exclusive: Melanie Griffith Cuts into Nip/Tuck Role". TVGuide.com. Retrieved 2009-04-16.
14. ^ http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20108381,00.html
15. Antonio And Melanie Receive Hollywood Charity Award
16. http://www.parade.com/celebrity/hollywood-wire/2009/08/26/melanie-griffith-return-to-rehab-was-planned.html
17. "Melanie Griffith has skin cancer surgery". CNN. Retrieved April 9, 2010.

External links

• Melanie Griffith at IMDb
• Please use a more specific IBDB template. See the documentation for available templates.
• Template:Amg name
• Template:Ymovies name
• Griffin's weblog
• Melanie Griffith cast bio on The WB

Template:Persondata

• 1957 births
• Living people
• Actors from New York
• American bloggers
• American child actors
• American film actors
• American television actors
• Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
• Celebrity offspring
• People self-identifying as alcoholics
• American actors of German descent
• American people of Norwegian descent
• People from New York City
• American actors of Swedish descent
• Worst Actress Golden Raspberry Award winners
• Worst Supporting Actress Golden Raspberry Award winners