Tippi Hedren
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Tippi Hedren |
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| Personal | |
| Born | January 19, 1930 New Ulm, Minnesota, USA |
| Years active | 1950-2018 |
| Ethnicity | White |
| Nationality | American |
| Body | |
| Measurements | 34-24-32 |
| Bra/cup size | 34C (75C)[1] |
| Boobs | Natural[2] |
| Height | 5 ft 3 in (1.60 m) |
| Weight | 110 lb (50 kg) |
| Body type | Slim |
| Eye color | Brown |
| Hair | Blonde |
| Databases | |
| IMDb | |
Nathalie Kay "Tippi" Hedren is an American retired actress and former fashion model.
A successful fashion model who appeared on the front covers of Life and Glamour magazines, among others, Hedren became an actress after she was discovered by director Alfred Hitchcock while appearing on a television commercial in 1961. She achieved great praise for her work in two of his films: the suspense-thriller The Birds (1963) and for which she won a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, and the psychological drama Marnie (1964). She has appeared in over 80 films and television shows, including Charlie Chaplin's final film A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), the political satire Citizen Ruth (1996), and the existential comedy I Heart Huckabees (2004). Among other honors, her contributions to world cinema have been recognized with the Jules Verne Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She is well-known for her animal rescue work, particularly for African lions. She has also been the face of a number of humanitarian aid campaigns. She is the mother of actress Melanie Griffith and grandmother to actress Dakota Johnson.
Early Life & Modeling Career
Hedren was born on January 19, 1930 in New Ulm, Minnesota. For much of Hedren's career as an adult, her date of birth was misreported as 1935. In a 2004 A&E Biography, however, she acknowledged that she was actually born in 1930, which is consistent with the birth registration index at the Minnesota Historical Society. Her paternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants, while her mother was of German and Norwegian descent. Her father ran a small general store in Lafayette, Minnesota gaining her access to fashion shows for department stores as a teenager. Her family eventually relocated to California while she was still in high school. On reaching her 20th birthday, Hedren bought a ticket to New York City, where she joined the Eileen Ford Agency. Within a year, she made her unofficial film debut as "Miss Ice Box" in the musical comedy The Petty Girl. Despite receiving several offers to continue acting, Hedren pursued modeling instead. She had a highly successful modeling career during the 1950s and early 1960s, appearing on the covers of Life, The Saturday Evening Post, McCall's, and Glamour, among others. Hedren met future advertising executive Peter Griffith while doing a walk-on role on The Aldrich Family in 1951, when she was 21 and he was 17. A day after Griffith turned 18, they obtained a marriage license and were married the following year in New York.heir daughter Melanie was born on August 9, 1957. They divorced in 1960, after which Hedren dated comedian Mort Sahl.
Acting Career
On October 13, 1961, she received a call from an agent who told her a producer was interested in working with her. When she was told it was Alfred Hitchcock, who while watching The Today Show, saw her in a commercial for a diet drink called Sego, she agreed to sign a seven-year contract to work exclusively for the director.
Hitchcock asked costume designer Edith Head to design clothes for Hedren's private life and he personally advised her about wine and food. The Birds (1963) was Hedren's screen debut. Hitchcock became her drama coach, and gave her an education in film-making, as she attended many of the production meetings such as script, music, or photography conferences. The film was screened out of competition in May at a prestigious invitational showing at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, tied with Elke Sommer and Ursula Andress.
Hitchcock was so impressed with Hedren's acting abilities, he decided to offer her the leading role of his next film, Marnie (1964) opposite Sean Connery, a romantic drama and psychological thriller from the novel by Winston Graham. On release, the film was greeted by mixed reviews and indifferent box-office returns, and received no Oscar nominations. Despite its original lukewarm reception, the film was later acclaimed and described as a "masterpiece" and Hedren's performance is now regarded as one of the finest in any Hitchcock film. Marnie was the second and last collaboration between Hedren and Hitchcock. In 1973, she admitted that a major lifestyle difference caused a split in their relationship because of Hitchcock's controlling and demanding nature. n 1983, author Donald Spoto published his second book about Hitchcock, The Dark Side of Genius, for which Hedren agreed to talk for the first time in detail about her relationship with the director. The book was controversial, as several of Hitchcock's friends claimed the Hitchcock portrayed in the book was not the man they knew and Hedren claimed that Hitchcock's overtures were becoming more inappropriate. After Hedren refused to do more films with the director, Hitchcock used the power of his contract with Hedren to turn down several film roles she was offered after Marnie. n 1966, Hitchcock finally sold her contract to Universal Studios after Hedren appeared in two of their TV shows, Kraft Suspense Theatre (1965) and Run for Your Life. Universal ultimately released her from the contract after she refused to appear in a Western TV show they offered. On September 27, 1964, Hedren married her then-agent Noel Marshall. The two would divorce in 1982 after doing several films together.
Hedren's first feature film appearance after Marnie was writer-director Charlie Chaplin's final film A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. Hedren would continue to act throughout the late 60s and early 70s and even appear with future son-in-law Don Johnson in 1973's The Harrad Experiment. The film features a moment where Hedren strips down to her bra and panties in front of Johnson on the lawn of a school. The coming-of-age film about a college where students learn about sexuality and experiment with each other was based on the 1966 novel by Robert Rimmer. The film grossed $3 million at the box office and had a sequel the following year of which Hedren did not return for. Despite the frequent work in the late 60s and early 70s, none of Hedren's roles were major films.
Hedren and husband Noel Marshall watched a pride of lions move into a house after a game warden moved out in 1969, during the filming of Satan's Harvest in Africa. The event would have a profound effect on the two of them, and Marshall would begin writing the script to what would eventually become the film Roar released in 1981. Filming started in 1974 and took five years just to complete the photography. uring production, no animals were hurt, but more than 70 members of the cast and crew were mauled. Hedren fractured a leg and also had scalp wounds when an elephant bucked her off its back while she was riding it. She was also bitten in the neck by a lion and required 38 stitches; this incident can be seen in the film. Melanie Griffith was also attacked, receiving 50 stitches to her face; it was feared that she would lose an eye, but she recovered and was not disfigured. Marshall was attacked so many times that he eventually was diagnosed with gangrene. In one of those incidents, he was clawed by a cheetah when protecting the animals during a bushfire that occurred in 1979. All animals were evacuated, and several years were needed for him to recover from his injuries. In 1978, a flood destroyed the movie sets and killed three of the lions. The film cost $17 million and grossed only $2 million after its worldwide release. In 1983, Hedren established the nonprofit The Roar Foundation to take care of the big cats in the wake of the film's release.
After Roar, Hedren accepted any low-budget television or cinema role that could help bring funds to her foundation to provide protection, shelter, care, and maintenance for the animals at the Shambala Reserve. After a tenuous divorce from husband Noel Marshall in 1982, Hedren married steel manufacturer Luis Barrenechea on February 15, 1985. The two divorced in 1992 after Hedren claims Barrenechea was an alcoholic.
Roles bounced from unsuccessful Hollywood films to television. From 1994 to 1996, Hedren had a guest-starring role in the tv series Dream On. In 1996, she played an abortion rights activist in Alexander Payne's political satire Citizen Ruth with Laura Dern that drew widespread praise. In 1998, she co-starred alongside Billy Zane and Christina Ricci in I Woke Up Early the Day I Died that vastly went unnoticed. Hedren was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003. After appearing in a number of little-exposed films between 1999 and 2003, Hedren had a small but showy role in the 2004 David O. Russell comedy I Heart Huckabees, as a foul-mouthed attractive older woman who slaps Jude Law in an elevator.
In 2006, Hedren was a cast member of the short-lived prime time soap opera Fashion House with Bo Derek and Morgan Fairchild, and continued to guest-star in television series such as The 4400 (2006) and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2008). Hedren was engaged to veterinarian Martin Dinnes from 2002 to 2008. She has never remarried.
In 2012, Hedren and her daughter guest-starred together on an episode of Raising Hope. That same year, she appeared in Free Samples, an indie film where she had a supporting role as an old movie star. In 2013, she made an appearance as herself in the fourth-season finale of Cougar Town alongside Courteney Cox. Hedren published her autobiography, Tippi: A Memoir, co-written with Lindsay Harrison, in 2016. She followed that up as the face of a Gucci ad campaign in 2018 at the age of 88. As of 2020, Hedren still maintains more than a dozen lions and tigers at the Shambala Preserve. Despite not being nominated for an Oscar, Hedren has taken home numerous awards for her acting, activism, and philanthropy.
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