Melanie Griffith

 Born August 9, 1957

Melanie Griffith can probably tell you stories about the adolescent anxieties of growing up with a really hot mom. Her mother is Tippi Hedren, from Hitchcock's MARNIE and THE BIRDS. Few actresses got off to a faster, wilder start than Griffith. (Maybe Drew Barrymore?) She met Don Johnson on the set of her mom's movie THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT. She was 15, he was 22 and divorced, but Tippi Hedren seems to have had a very liberal attitude about these things, and allowed Melanie to move in with Don. The moment she turned 18 she became the go-to actress for precocious wild-girl roles and did a spectacular Playboy lay-out, but by 20 her drug use was so bad nobody would hire her. Fortunately for world cinema, she got cleaned up and became a star, beginning with her outrageous role as pornstar Holly Body in Brian de Palma's BODY DOUBLE, and cemented by Jonathan Demme's SOMETHING WILD. Over the years she became a decent actress; I love her in ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE.

 
Night Moves (DVD)    1975
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 DVD $19.48 SALE $9.74
Fine example of the dark, haunted 1970s grown-up movie, the last time movies for adults dominated Hollywood. (ROCKY and STAR WARS put and end to that.) The title is a play on words. In the movie it is "knight moves" referring to a winning c... (see full description)
 
Stormy Monday (DVD)    1988
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 DVD $14.98 SALE $7.49
Directed by Mike Figgis. Equal parts of romantic comedy and crime drama are blended to tell the story of an American land magnate trying to buy up a British mining town, the jazz club owner trying to stop him, and the two hirelings trying n... (see full description)