Personal Life
At age 14, Griffith began dating her mother's 22-year-old Harrad Experiment co-star, Don Johnson. The relationship culminated in a six-month marriage in 1976. Tatum O'Neal has alleged in her 2004 autobiography that around that time, she (then 12) and Griffith (then 18) had a sexual encounter in a Paris hotel room while high on opium and hashish.
In May 1982, Griffith married Steven Bauer, her co-star from the TV film She's in the Army Now. They have a son, Alexander, born on August 22, 1985. The couple divorced in 1987. Griffith later admitted to having problems with cocaine and liquor after her divorce from Bauer. "What I did was drink myself to sleep at night," she said. "If I wasn't with someone, I was an unhappy girl."
She checked into rehab in 1988. After becoming sober, she reunited with Johnson and remarried him in June 1989 when she was already five months pregnant. Their daughter, Dakota Johnson, was born on October 4, 1989. They separated in March 1994, reconciled later that year, but separated again in May 1995.
Griffith and Antonio Banderas began a relationship in May 1995 when they started filming Two Much. At that time, Banderas was married to Ana Leza. After their respective divorces were finalized, the couple married on May 14, 1996. Their daughter, Stella del Carmen Banderas Griffith, was born on September 24, 1996. In 2000, Griffith had her husband's first name "Antonio" encircled in a heart tattooed on her right shoulder. In 2002, the couple received the Stella Adler Angel Award for their extensive charity work.
Her father, Peter Griffith, died at age 67 on May 14, 2001.
Griffith returned to rehab in 2000 for a painkiller addiction. In August 2009, she returned to rehab again for what her publicist called "part of a routine plan." She emerged after a three-month stay and underwent surgery for skin cancer in December of that year.
Discussing Griffith’s treatment in rehab, Banderas said in April 2010, “The whole family took part, Stella included. I was there three times a week at a stretch, and we participated in group therapy with our daughter. It strengthened our relationship in many ways. We participated very directly, all of us." Griffith’s son Alexander and daughter Dakota were there, as was her former stepson, Jesse Johnson, and Griffith's mother, Tippi Hedren.
In 2012, Griffith started up a non-profit organization benefitting burned children. The point of the organization is to replace all of their skin with real or almost-real skin.
Read more about this topic: Melanie Griffith
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Your children don’t have equal talents now and they won’t have equal opportunities later in life. You may be able to divide resources equally in childhood, but your best efforts won’t succeed in shielding them from personal or physical crises. . . . Your heart will be broken a thousand times if you really expect to equalize your children’s happiness by striving to love them equally.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“Sunday morning may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging over it the ominous threat of 3 P.M., when the sun gets around to the back windows and life stops dead in its tracks.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)