Melanie Griffith

Melanie Griffith

Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress and film producer. She is the daughter of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the granddaughter of former Vice President Richard Nixon. She has two children: Tracy Griffith, who also became an actress, and Clay A. Griffith, a set designer.

About Melanie Griffith in brief

Summary Melanie GriffithMelanie Richards Griffith is an American actress and film producer. She began her career in the 1970s, appearing in several independent thriller films before achieving mainstream success in the mid-1980s. In the 2010s, Griffith returned to film, starring opposite then-husband Antonio Banderas in the science-fiction film Autómata and as an acting coach in James Franco’s The Disaster Artist. Griffith was born in New York City to actress Tippi Hedren and advertising executive Peter Griffith. She has two children: Tracy Griffith, who also became an actress, and Clay A. Griffith, a set designer. In 2003, she made her Broadway debut in a revival of the musical Chicago, receiving celebratory reviews. Griffith has also dated Ryan O’Neal, who claimed she dragged her into an orgy with Maria Schneider and a male hairdresser during the time of her father’s relationship with Griffith. Her mother married agent and producer Noel Marshall when Griffith was seven years old; her father married model-actress Nanita Greene and had two more children: Tracy Griffith and Clay Griffith. Griffith’s maternal ancestry is Swedish, Norwegian, and German; her paternal ancestry is German, Swedish, and Norwegian. She is the daughter of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the granddaughter of former Vice President Richard Nixon. Her father is a former child stage actor and advertising Executive Peter Griffith, and her mother is an actress and former child model, as well as a former Miss New York.

She was raised in Los Angeles, where she graduated from the Hollywood Professional School at age 16. In 1975, a then 17-year-old Griffith appeared opposite Gene Hackman in Arthur Penn’s film noir Night Moves. She later rose to prominence for portraying an actor in pornographic films in Brian De Palma’s thriller Body Double, which earned her a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. The 1990s had Griffith in a series of roles that received varying critical reception; she received Golden Globe nominations for her performances in Buffalo Girls and as Marion Davies in RKO 281, while also earning a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress in Shining Through. She spent the majority of the 2000s appearing on such television series as NipTuck, Raising Hope, and Hawaii Five-0. Griffith appeared in advertisements and briefly worked as a child model before abandoning the career, citing extreme shyness as the reason. In 1977, she had a supporting role playing a hitchhiker in the sports drama One One One. She had a six-month marriage to actor Don Johnson, then 22, from January to July 1976. In 2009, she starred as Barbara Marx in The Night We Called It a Day, and later starred in the film Another Day in Paradise. In 2011, she played a contestant in The Drowning Pool, a thriller in which she portrayed a Louisiana woman involved in a crime investigation.