Melanie Griffith

Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress born on August 9, 1957, in Manhattan, New York City. The daughter of actress Tippi Hedren and former child actor and advertising executive Peter Griffith, she spent her early life living in Los Angeles with her mother and in New York with her father. Raised around her mother's animal preserve, Shambala, she worked briefly as a child model before leaving the field. She attended the Hollywood Professional School, graduating at age 16.

Griffith began her acting career with extra roles in *Smith!* (1969) and *The Harrad Experiment* (1973). Her first major film role came in Arthur Penn's 1975 neo-noir thriller *Night Moves*, opposite Gene Hackman. That same year, she appeared in the comedy *Smile*, the thriller *The Drowning Pool*, and served as Miss Golden Globe. Additional early roles included parts in *One on One* (1977), *The Garden* (1977), *Joyride* (1977), and the wild animal feature *Roar* (1981), during which she survived a lion attack. She also co-starred in the 1981 television movie *She's in the Army Now*.

Following a brief hiatus, Griffith returned to prominence in Brian De Palma's 1984 thriller *Body Double*, winning the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. She followed with roles in *Fear City* (1984), Jonathan Demme's *Something Wild* (1986), the science-fiction film *Cherry 2000*, and Mike Figgis's *Stormy Monday* (1988). Griffith achieved widespread mainstream success starring as Tess McGill in Mike Nichols's box-office hit *Working Girl* (1988). Her performance earned her the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Throughout the 1990s, Griffith maintained a busy schedule across various genres. She starred in *Pacific Heights* (1990), *The Bonfire of the Vanities* (1990), *Paradise* (1991), *Shining Through* (1992), *A Stranger Among Us* (1992), *Born Yesterday* (1993), *Milk Money* (1994), and *Nobody's Fool* (1994). Later in the decade, she received Golden Globe nominations for the television film *Buffalo Girls* (1995) and the biographical drama *RKO 281* (1999). Her other feature film credits from this period include *Mulholland Falls* (1996), *Lolita* (1997), *Another Day in Paradise* (1998), *Crazy in Alabama* (1999), and John Waters's *Cecil B. Demented* (2000).

In the 2000s, Griffith voiced Margalo in the animated film *Stuart Little 2* (2002) and appeared in *The Night We Called It a Day* (2003). She made her Broadway stage debut in 2003 playing Roxie Hart in a revival of the musical *Chicago*, following a stage run in London. During the decade, she also took on television roles in series such as *Nip/Tuck*, *Raising Hope*, and *Hawaii Five-0*. In the 2010s, she returned to feature films, appearing alongside Antonio Banderas in the science-fiction movie *Autómata* (2014) and playing an acting coach in James Franco's *The Disaster Artist* (2017).