Melanie Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an American film actress. She is the daughter of actress Tippi Hedren who is of Swedish, German and Norwegian descent and Peter Griffith of English descent.
Griffith began working in films at an early age as an extra on Smith! (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973). Her first major role was in Night Moves in 1975. Other major roles include Body Double (1984), Something Wild (1986), Working Girl (1988) for which she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Milk Money (1994), Another Day in Paradise (1998) and Cecil B. DeMented (2000).
Griffith has been married four times. She was briefly married to Don Johnson in 1976. She was married to Steven Bauer from 1980 to 1987. She remarried Johnson in 1989. The couple divorced again in 1996 and Griffith married her current husband Antonio Banderas that same year. Griffith has three children by three husbands: Dakota Mayi Johnson, Alexander Griffith Bauer, and Stella del Carmen Banderas. Dakota followed in her mother's footsteps and served as Miss Golden Globe at the 2006 Golden Globes award ceremony. Griffith was Miss Golden Globe in 1975.
She received an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actress in HBO television movie, RKO 281 (1999). She is currently seen on The WB sitcom Twins, in which she plays Lee, the mother of the show's main characters played by Sara Gilbert and Molly Stanton.
In her book A Paper Life, the Oscar-winning actress Tatum O'Neal alleges that Griffith dragged her, at age 12, into an opium-fuelled orgy in Paris, along with another actress and the boyfriend of one of the actresses. Tatum also alleged that she walked in on Melanie while she was in bed with her father Ryan O'Neal.
