Melanie Griffith

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. Her parents separated when she was two years old, after which she moved to Los Angeles with her mother. During her childhood she split time between New York, where she lived with her father, and Antelope Valley, California, where her mother established the animal preserve Shambala. Griffith attended the Hollywood Professional School, where she advanced quickly enough to skip a grade and graduate at age 16. Her paternal ancestry includes English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, Native Irish, and Scottish roots, while her maternal ancestry is Swedish, Norwegian, and German.

Griffith's earliest screen appearances came as an extra in Smith! (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973). At 17, she landed her first major role in Arthur Penn's film noir Night Moves (1975), playing a runaway teenager pursued by a private detective portrayed by Gene Hackman. That same year she appeared in the comedy Smile as a pageant contestant and in Stuart Rosenberg's thriller The Drowning Pool alongside Joanne Woodward. She was also named Miss Golden Globe for 1975. In 1977 she took supporting roles in the sports drama One on One and in Joyride opposite Robert Carradine.

Her career gained renewed momentum in the 1980s after a period in which drug and alcohol addiction had slowed her output. At 26 she returned with a role as a pornographic film actor in Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984), a performance that earned her the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress despite the film's commercial failure. She followed that with a supporting part in Abel Ferrara's Fear City (1985) and then her first starring role in Jonathan Demme's comedy Something Wild (1986) opposite Jeff Daniels, which brought her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. She also appeared in the speculative science fiction film Cherry 2000 and in Mike Figgis's neo-noir Stormy Monday (1988) alongside Sean Bean, Tommy Lee Jones, and Sting.

Griffith's most celebrated film performance came in Working Girl (1988), which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and a Golden Globe win. The 1990s brought a varied slate of projects, including John Schlesinger's Pacific Heights (1990), Milk Money (1994), the neo-noir Mulholland Falls (1996), and Adrian Lyne's Lolita (1997), in which she played Charlotte Haze. She also appeared in Another Day in Paradise (1998). Her television work during the decade included the miniseries Buffalo Girls (1995), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination, and RKO 281 (1999), in which she portrayed Marion Davies and earned another Golden Globe nomination. Her performance in Shining Through (1992) brought a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress, and she received additional Razzie nominations for Crazy in Alabama (1999) and John Waters's Cecil B. Demented (2000).

In the 2000s, Griffith provided the voice of Margalo in Stuart Little 2 (2002) and starred as Barbara Marx in The Night We Called It a Day (2003). After performing on stage in London, she made her Broadway debut in 2003 in a revival of the musical Chicago, receiving celebratory reviews. That Broadway appearance marked her sole credited stage production on the New York stage. She spent much of the remainder of the decade in television, appearing on series including Nip/Tuck, Raising Hope, and Hawaii Five-0.

In the 2010s Griffith returned to film, appearing 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).