A household name, Melanie Griffith started her career as a child actress. She was no stranger to the world of performance arts. She was born to Tippi Hedren, an actress, and Peter Griffith, a child stage actor and executive. She first started working as a child model, which she gave up quickly, citing shyness as a reason. From a young child who was embarrassed before a camera to a Golden Globe Winning Actress, Griffith’s life story is one for the books. Where did she start, and where is she now?
Change is so deeply associated with life that sometimes, living becomes synonymous with changing. While growth is almost always positive, change is more complex. One thing, however, that leads to more optimism is that change can lead to growth. Changes are associated with all lives, no matter how ordinary or famous.
The changes that celebrities go through often get measured in terms of physical appearance. It is not unlikely to hear things like, ‘Remember that one beautiful actress, look how she has changed.’ Their stories and their actual growth often become secondary. Yet when one decides to talk about how someone is different from their past, they must speak in all aspects, not just one.
She was an icon in the 80s. She received immense critical acclaim for her work in Body Double. For her role in Working Girl, Griffith received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. As a child born into a Hollywood family, she had an early start.
This, however, came at a price. Even during her adolescent years, she was not safe. During her life in Hollywood, she suffered the price of fame from a young age. Soon the once shy girl had turned into a famed actress who was soon to meet a downfall.
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Sexualized At Fourteen
The earliest of Melanie Griffith’s roles was in the films Smith! (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973) as a side actress. During the filming of the latter film, the fourteen-year-old Melanie met Don Johnson, 22, and they started a relationship. The relationship then culminated in a six-month marriage. While today anyone can see what is wrong with such a situation, her mother was never against it.
Griffith’s first major role came in the noir film Night Moves (1975) when she was seventeen. In this film, she controversially appeared nude, and unfortunately, this was little outrage back in the day. She got noticed for her role and ended up with two more films, Smile, and The Drowning Pool. One newspaper wrote about her – “She has the body of a sensuous woman, the pouting, chipmunk face of a teenager, and the voice of a child” Somehow, this was seen as acceptable. Her objectification as a sexual object started way before she was even an adult.
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Surviving A Lion
Griffith and her mother, Herden, worked in a film together directed by her stepfather, titled Roar. This stranger than fiction story was quite real. Melanie’s mother was an animal rights activist, and hence Griffith grew up surrounded by all sorts of animals, including the wilder ones. Her story was an inspiration for the film.
In the film, the animals in the home of these characters turn on them. During the filming, Melanie was mauled by a lion on the set. The injury was severe, and she had to get facial reconstruction surgery. The scars from the surgery were visible in the parts of the film.
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Battling Addiction
Her addiction first started at the age of eighteen when she was living a highly pressured yet wild lifestyle with her former husband, Johnson. She sought addiction treatment twice, first in 1988 and then in 2000. Her wake-up call was when she was fined $80,000 in 1988 when she showed up to the set of Working Girl drunk.
She spoke in various interviews that she often drank as means to fill the void. Her relationships often seemed challenging, and her splits were very public. She was a child actress who was being objectified since very young and, on top of all that, had the pressure to live up to her mother’s name. She made a great recovery and, in 2000, was rehabilitated again after she developed an addiction as a result of a neck injury.
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Where Is She Now?
Now at the age of 65, she has overcome addiction and has become a wonderful mother. She went through four divorces with three partners and is a mother to three children. Her second oldest is Dakota Johnson, a world-famous actress who made a name for herself starring in Fifty Shades of Gray.
Melanie Griffith most recently appeared in the film, The High Note (2020). She continues to make appearances, and the list of her filmography is long as ever. Recently there have been rumors flying around about her dating her fellow actress Jamie Lee Curtis.
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