Melanie Griffith, 59, has a somewhat dishy interview in Porter, Net-a-Porter’s magazine, which is currently covered by Bella Hadid. This makes me a little sad for Melanie because I do think she rates a cover over Bella, but I get it, Bella is up-and-coming, etc. People published some quotes from the piece and Melanie gets candid about her alcohol abuse, about her relationship with Antonio Banderas, and about the work she had done on her face. She doesn’t go into specifics about that, but she does say the public’s reaction to whatever she had done, which sounds like injectable fillers, hurt her so much she went to another doctor to have it “dissolved.” All of that sounds painful frankly. Here are some quotes, via People:
On her first stint in rehab, in 1998
“I was a totally functioning mom. I wasn’t like a drunk-on-the-floor, out-of-it person. I didn’t do some things I probably should have done but, mostly, I was there for my kids. They had a sort of privileged gypsy life.”On reconciling with Don Johnson when she got out of rehab in 1998
“Don was actually waiting for me when I got out of rehab. We got back together; it was the most natural, perfect, loving thing. Then it just sort of wasn’t working. I think it’s hard when you are both in the public eye, unless one of you gives up work.”On the end of her marriage to Antonio
“I think part of the reason my marriage to Antonio fell apart was because I was stuck; nobody else is to blame. It’s just that I personally got stuck and I won’t let that happen again, I want to enjoy life, I want to do whatever I want to do,” she says.On if she dates now
“I’m shy with men now, very reticent … nobody has asked me on a date [for almost two years].”On negative reactions to her plastic surgery
“No, I didn’t [realize] until people started saying. ‘Oh my god, what has she done?!’ I was so hurt I went to a different doctor and he started dissolving all of this s— that this other woman doctor had put in. Hopefully, I look more normal now.”
Melanie was married to Don Johnson twice; for just a year in 1976 and then again from 1989 to 1996. She married actor Steven Bauer in between reconciling with Don, from 1981 to 1989, and was with Antonio from 1996 to 2014. She has one child from each relationship. Her time in rehab in 1998 wasn’t her last. She went again in 2008 to treat an addiction to painkillers following a knee injury. So she has an addictive personality, but she’s saying she wasn’t that bad when she quit the first time. I quit drinking nine months ago and have been told to identify with people with addictions, not to compare myself so that I don’t minimize it and start drinking again. I’m saying you can be functioning on a superficial level as she mentions and still be an alcoholic who is hurting yourself and your family. I’m not trying to speak to her experience, just mine.
As for her plastic surgery, I feel so bad for her. She got crap for aging and then she got crap for trying to do something about it. I would guess she had a face lift and then too many fillers (particularly in her lips, that was obvious) which she had fixed. It’s got to be hard to grow older in Hollywood.
Melanie with her mom, Tippi Hedren (87!) in late February:
Melanie in 2001:
Melanie in 2010:
photos credit: WENN
I wouldn’t have recognized her. Dang.
Melanie and Kate Capshaw are sharing the same face.
Her hard living really took it’s toll on her face. She still smokes from pix I see which is not helping matters.
She has really paid the price for the plastic surgery hasn’t she? Her nose is so wide and flat now and her mouth misshapen. There is nothing that is going to dissolve all of that.
She does look better. I’ll give her that. I hope she gets more work as a result. She’s talented.
Which reaction is she talking about? She’s done so many crazy things to her face since the late 90s. It’s weird to see her in films from the 70s when she was a teen, she was a completely different person.
IMO she looks good, but also looks like she went to Candy Spelling’s doctor as they could pass for sisters.
When it comes to surgery/ injectibles, every woman in hollywood who goes down that road should ask Jane Fonda, Demi Moore, Susan Sarandon and Robin Wright for their doctors’ numbers because they admit to procedures/ injectibles, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at them.
If Michelle Pfeiffer had anything done, then she’s got the best doctor around, imo.
Yep!!
Yes I agree but to be fair, Michelle has amazing bone structure and skin elasticity.
I mean, you can only do so much magic with PS and it really helps if you have good genes and a healthy lifestyle.
I’m watching season 3 of Grace and Frankie. Jane looks fantastic, great figure. But she has overdone the fillers just a tad. Her face is too smooth and plump in the cheek area for her age, and so it doesn’t fit. I do find it noticeable now on Jane, not Madonna territory, but noticeable. She looked better several years back when she looked less “done.” She had had the facelift, but wasn’t heavy on the filler.
I still adore her and wish I had a tenth of her zest towards life.
I agree on Robin Wright and Susan Sarandon. Jane and Demi have gone a little too “LA” plastic for my taste.
She needs to ask her momma what she’s doing! Tippi looks good!
Don’t they simply inject something to dissolve it? I I would imagine it to be as painful as getting fillers (I could be wrong though) and getting mine didn’t hurt at all.
I only got them in my undereye area though.
Anyways, her and Don Johnson went to a doctor in Germany (a plastic surgeon) to get his revlutionary anti-aging cream and when I read that I was like “yeah, creme…sure”
Addiction is hard. I never thought I had a drinking problem because I pegged it as something people my age do. I started drinking when I was 16 and by my early 20’s my life was obsessed with getting alcohol and partying and I didn’t think I could have fun without it. I gave it all up when I had my daughter at 24 and haven’t had a drink since and I’ll tell you I have wayyyy more fun sober than I did being a drunk! My husband had the same issues but with cocaine, he didn’t think he could have fun without it, like me he gave that up when we had our girl and he feels the same way, the drugs were just clouding over his life instead of helping him enjoy it.
Good for you Lucy! You should be proud!! Putting your baby first is always the right choice! 🙂
Well TBH what’s the thing to do? Yeah she was looking Rough, People acknowledged same and Yeah she went and found a slightly better doctor.. I mean… Yeah had to happen
I will always love Melanie. Working Girl is one of my favorite movies of all time.
I thought she was talking about her botched facelift that she got too early. That’s what I read on DM.
I can remember when it happened. Rosie O’Donnell had her show. One time I saw her on it and Melanie looked adorable, fantastic. The next time she was on, not all that much later, she had had a horrible facelift, and her face looked like a tight skull. It was awful. I couldn’t believe at her age she went out and got a facelift on a thin face. Her career kind of ended right around there, and she was only in her mid 40s at most. The fillers started coming later when fillers became the vogue.
I wonder if she went to the same person who ruined Jessica Lange’s face.
Perhaps they both went to the guy who ruined Mickey Rourke and Priscilla Presley’s faces or were those surgeries much earlier? I remember that Mickey and Priscilla sued.
I will never get over what Priscilla did to her face. Someone with such natural beauty to destroy it like she has is just sad. One “doctor” she went to wasn’t licensed, it turns out. Everything was a mess on her face after her plastic surgery and getting silicone put in her face. Her once beautiful lips looked bizarre, even.
The fact that she didn’t seem to have an issue with the work until other people told her really makes me wonder. She dramatically changed her face, multiple times.
It’s odd that she would feel the need to identify the gender of her doctors. Whether or not she intends it, it seems like she’s blaming her “woman doctor” and was saved by her male doctor.
Hm.
The genders of the doctors pinged at me too, but perhaps she thought using a female doctor, they would understand a female face better and not go too far.
YES I found that really weird too. Glad I’m not alone.
Cautionary for chicks like kylie jenner and Bella H. Dont put too much value on appearances…
Why are people who drink a lot or smoke surprised that they age more rapidly?
It’s true that most heavy drinkers who smoke *do* age early, but I have an alcoholic, chain smoking cousin who, at 40, still gets carded! It’s happened countless times when I’ve been w her! It’s all genetic, in her case—both of her parents look decades younger than they are. But I think it will catch up with her eventually—or, far worse, she’ll make herself ill before that happens.
Melanie seems to be admitting only to fillers, when anyone who has even slightly followed her career knows her history of very bad, bizarre plastic surgery, too.
1998 was her first rehab? I could’ve sworn I’d read that it was late 80s/early 90s? I could be wrong. But it’s no secret that she was a raging addict during the shoot for Working Girl (I LOVE that movie and her in it).
I do wonder whether addicts sometimes look at their adult children and go “Yeah, I wasn’t so bad. I was functioning. Look how they turned out!” when really, kids aren’t stupid. You know your parent is an addict or at least you know something’s terribly off. My parents sometimes say sh*t like that. “I’m so glad you two turned out perfectly normal.” Did we though? I know it looks that way but man, there’s a reason for some decisions we’ve made in life. But my parents would probably never make the connection between me being (and staying) single and childless and their horrible fights and my father’s drinking. I mean did they think that just because we made it through school/uni etc. and never caused any trouble (drugs, partying etc.) those 20 years didn’t have any effect?
Sorry, I digress. That comment just hit a nerve. Maybe I’m projecting.
Regarding her face, I mean nobody said anything? Her family? Friends? She’s had SO much done and I’m wondering if it’s not connected to her addiction issues.
I think you’re 100% right. Growing up the child of an alcoholic with intermittent abuse in the home, my dad, who I don’t talk to, doesn’t get why because, ‘Hey, I turned out all right.’ (In fact, he thinks I should be grateful, but that’s a whole other story.)
It’s called survival, and it’s on the kids who made it through, not the parents who made it so difficult to do so. <<<<—–This doesn't mean they're all evil villains, or anything of the sort, just that you don't have to totally destroy someone for your actions towards them to have been destructive.
I also think my parents’ generation has a very limited notion of alcoholism. My dad – whom I love, these days we all mostly get along great – wasn’t what you saw on TV so it’s still hard to explain to some people. Most of it happened around us and there was no physical abuse. But man could it get vicious if you got in the middle. It was almost a daily thing.
It’s a misprint. She went to rehab in 1988, 2000 and 2009.
I rewatched Working Girl recently on Netflix – she was so beautiful. What she has done is tragic.
On the one hand, I feel real sympathy for the plight of women in Hollywood not allowed to age, and for someone who had to face ridicule for their looks … On the other, she’s the one that messed with her face, and if she couldn’t see how silly/different/weird she looked, that’s kind of on her and the yes-men/women she must surround herself if it came as a shock that the public was kind of horrified.
There are women in Hollywood who have had amazing work done; in that you know they’ve had the work done because they’re in their 60s and look 20 years young or whatnot, but most just ruin themselves in a way that’s both terribly sad and painfully predictable. Kind of illustrating why it’s a bad idea to base your self-worth on an “asset” designed to fade, a.k.a. beauty.
Melanie Griffith and Goldie Hawn are prime examples of this — gorgeous women that simply refused to let themselves age AT ALL, and underwent looks destroying plastic surgery to cover. Yes, Melanie does look better now and good for her. But maybe shoot for looking 5-7 years younger, not 20, and you’ll be more satisfied and less ridiculed over all. Advice Goldie should be giving to Kate, too, sadly, and Melanie to Dakota, while she’s young and presumably untouched.
Someone like Blythe Danner seems to have walked that line really well; both with letting herself age naturally, to some degree, and having amazing genetics in the first place, plus some gentle, not-to-instrusive freshening, but she’s the exception, sadly.
And it’s not just movie stars anymore, I saw pictures of gymnast Nadia Comaneci last week and she’s totally unrecognizable. So much very bad work. Makes me genuinely sad.
I’m assuming that “1998” was a typo and that the author meant “1989”.
Melanie Griffith has never been the brightest woman. She has no formal education, and didn’t exactly develop a ton of street smarts. All she had were her looks and her connections, both of which faded as she got older. And this probably sounds heartless, but I don’t have a ton of sympathy for her. She rode that wave as long as she could, and partied hard. You have to pay the piper at some point, and she’s just lucky she hasn’t messed up her kids (that we can see).
She did not get into movies because of her looks. She wasn’t pretty in her teens, 20s or even early 30s for that matter. But she was talented and she was willing to appear nude, which always helps a young actress’s career.
Best of luck and Congrats on not drinking Celebitchy! Giving up drinking was incredibly hard — I tried to quit preventatively and I’ve been mostly successful since I did that a few years ago (I fell off the wagon when my fiance committed suicide, but I’ve been trying to get back on). I also try to identify with alcoholics to keep me on the straight and narrow. Best advice I ever got was “Just because you’ve stopped drinking doesn’t mean you’re not an alcoholic” — I try to keep that with me to help me stay away
Also love and best wishes to any other Celebitches who have had to/trying to quit anything at all — it’s a long, hard road and I’m sending you all my positive vibes!
I think Melanie Griffin is beautiful and she always has been. And a wonderful actress and I’m sure a wonderful mother cause your children are smart and look at everything they have accomplished. Please don’t ever listen to negative people you are beautiful. Oh by the way Dakota needs to date Scott Eastwood they would be perfect together. Loves ya. and remember be who you are don’t ever change.
She looks much better without all that crap in her face but I don’t like the bright red lipstick at all. She seems like a very nice person and anyone can have a problem with drugs and alcohol, it’s especially common in her industry, no doubt because it’s cut-throat and super hard on the ego. Aging sucks, it must be hell under the microscope.
She had amazing work done in the first half of the 90s.
Here she is looking haggard at age 33 in 1990: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/10/31/article-2482446-191A57DD00000578-154_306x423.jpg
And suddenly a fresh faced near-beauty at age 37 in 1994: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WFOM58iTTJQ/maxresdefault.jpg