Melanie Griffith's Real Name: Melanie Richards Griffith

Quick answer: Melanie Griffith's full name is Melanie Richards Griffith. She was born on August 9, 1957, in New York City. She is the daughter of actress Tippi Hedren and is best known for Working Girl (1988), which earned her an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica's quick facts give her name in full as "Melanie Richards Griffith" and her birth date as August 9, 1957, in New York. The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Griffith, Melanie, 1957-." Its citation reads "b. Aug. 9. 1957 in New York City; actress daughter of actress Tippi Hedren."

Her mother, Tippi Hedren, starred in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). Her father, Peter Griffith, was a businessman. Britannica says her parents divorced when she was four, and she moved with her mother to Los Angeles. She modeled and appeared in commercials as a child. Her feature debut came in 1969, as an uncredited extra in the western Smith!. She graduated from the Hollywood Professional School at 16.

Career highlights

Griffith's first credited film role was a runaway in Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975), opposite Gene Hackman. Britannica says the next several years brought little success and that she struggled with addiction over the following decades.

She married actor Steven Bauer in 1981; with his encouragement she took acting lessons with Stella Adler. Her profile rose in the mid-1980s with Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984), Jonathan Demme's cult comedy Something Wild (1986), and Stormy Monday (1988).

Her breakthrough was Mike Nichols's Working Girl (1988). She played Tess McGill, a secretary who takes over her injured boss's job, opposite Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver. She received an Academy Award nomination for best actress and won a Golden Globe.

Her 1990s films included The Bonfire of the Vanities, Pacific Heights, Born Yesterday, and Mulholland Falls. She made her Broadway debut in Chicago in 2003 and later had a recurring role on Hawaii Five-0.

Britannica says she married actor Don Johnson twice, briefly in 1976 and again from 1989 to 1996. She was married to Antonio Banderas from 1996 until their 2015 divorce. Her daughter is actress Dakota Johnson, and Griffith made a cameo in Johnson's 2020 film The High Note.

Name notes for searchers

She has always worked as Melanie Griffith, the surname she was born with. Richards is her middle name, as recorded by Britannica. Her mother's professional name, Tippi Hedren, is different from Griffith's, which sometimes confuses searchers looking for a family link.