Early Life
For over 40 years, Hedren's year of birth was reported to be 1935, although in 2004 she acknowledged that she was actually born in 1930. Hedren was born in New Ulm, Minnesota, the daughter of Dorothea Henrietta (née Eckhardt) and Bernard Carl Hedren. Her paternal grandparents were immigrants from Sweden, and her maternal ancestry is German and Norwegian. Her father ran a small general store in the small town of Lafayette, Minnesota, and gave her the nickname "Tippi." "My father thought Nathalie was a little bit much for a brand new baby," Hedren explained at a 2004 screening of The Birds.
As a teenager, Hedren took part in department store fashion shows. Her parents relocated to California while she was still a high school student. When she reached her 18th birthday, she bought a ticket to New York and began a professional modeling career. Within a year she made her film debut (minus dialogue) as a Petty Girl model in the musical comedy The Petty Girl (1950), although in interviews she refers to The Birds (1963) as her first film.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)