The Unsinkable Melanie Griffith

Q: You've talked a lot about roles you've wanted but couldn't get, which I find interesting considering how you're known around town for having turned down several very plum roles.

A: True. Bernardo Bertolucci asked me to do The Sheltering Sky, but I was pregnant with Dakota--I wasn't going to have an abortion to do a movie. Basic Instinct I passed on. Can you believe I said no to the great role Geena Davis ended up getting in Thelma & Louise? I read it and just thought it was wicked and that those two women were bad. I was offered the role of Harrison Ford's girlfriend in Six Days Seven Nights, but I though it was a gratuitous scene, and I think it involved nudity. I wanted more than anything to work with Jim Brooks and Jack Nicholson on As Good As It Gets but I got pregnant with Stella. I begged Jim to wait until I had my baby but he couldn't. In the end, though, no movie rates anything near what it's like having Dakota and Stella to love.

Q: Madonna and Sharon Stone have both talked about what they went through emotionally when they turned 40. Did you feel any anxiety about it?

A: It was really hard a couple of months before my birthday. Age had never meant anything to me, then, all of a sudden, it did. Now it doesn't mean anything to me again but back then it really freaked me out. Around that time I was also thinking, "Why don't I have a job?" and "Why didn't I get called about this film when I know many other actresses at least got to meet for it?" After my agents said, "They didn't want you" and "We couldn't get you a meeting," I got weird and depressed.

Q: Weird and depressed enough to get a little hooked on collagen injections and trips to the plastic surgeon?

A: Adrian Lyne asked me to gain 10 pounds before I started Lolita, which, on top of being tough on my ego playing the mother role, made me feel like a complete porker. And I think everybody in town has had collagen put into their lips, which I did do at one point, but I don't have now. Jesus Christ, I mean, yes, I had my tits done after I had my second child, but I didn't make them bigger. I just had them put back to where they were because after you've had children, your body changes.

Q: Jeez, I've never heard you be so brutally honest.

A: I have to tell you something that really made an impression on me. When my friend Jamie Lee Curtis was filming Trading Places in New York she was dating Michael Riva, Marlene Dietrich's grandson. Marlene let Jamie Lee live in her Manhattan apartment that had been shut for 12 years. Jamie Lee called me the minute she moved in and said, "You have got to come over and see this now!" I did and it was amazing. Every window had gauze over it, all the light was filtered, so that no matter where you sat you were "lit" and looked beautiful. The bathroom was filled with those incredible old lipsticks that stained your lips red and face-lift tapes with little needles attached that looked like they'd make you bleed. There was also a whole bunch of opium cough syrup that I wanted to try even though Jamie Lee said, "Are you out of your mind? This stuff is from 1930."

This was during my real drug period. My point in telling you this story is that the house made me realize fame passes so it's important for women in the movie business to be brutally honest with themselves. Figure out if you want to have a family or if you only want to have a career like Katharine Hepburn. If you don't make that choice, you wait too long to have a family and start getting bitter if you don't. I've seen a lot of people blame not having a family on their career, and then, when their career's not working, they get fucked up. So, I look at all the lines on my face and go, yes, my face is changing, but it's changing along with what I've experienced in my life. How could I have added any depth or richness to my work if I hadn't lived and enjoyed a real life?

At this point Griffith has to head off to another appointment, but it's clear this party is way too much fun to stop dead. She invites me to drop by her home the following morning. The Spanish mission house in Brentwood is beautifully and dramatically furnished in a style that whispers old, not Hollywood, money. In the big, warm kitchen Griffith is perched beside a countertop as a hairstylist fixes her tresses for a Jay Leno appearance. The place jumps with activity--phones ringing, Stella romping merrily, hired help running around. When Banderas saunters in, kisses his wife and greets me with a warm hello, Griffith lights up the room with happiness. After several "I love you, baby"s are exchanged, she reminds him to pick up her cherry popsicles at the market before he returns home from work.

Q: Is it true that Antonio fell in love with you nearly 10 years before you two starred together in 1996's Two Much?

A: The first time he ever saw me was at the Oscars when I was there for my Best Actress nomination for Working Girl. Antonio's film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, so he was also there. He told me that at one point during the night I walked right past him, but I didn't see him. Can you imagine? He said that was the exact moment he fell in love with me.

Q: Very romantic.

A: He's a very rare man. He truly loves women.

Q: He certainly looks happy.

A: I hope so. I love to be in love. I'm terribly romantic. I really need romance. Antonio has romance in his blood, so we're a match. More than anything, I want him and my children to be happy. And then me. There's nothing more important to me than them. We're a family now.

Q: The press really beat you two up when you first started seeing each other.

A: No kidding. In the beginning the press's treatment of us was devastating to me. I've realized now, though, that I don't want to go through life calling magazines and newspapers saying, "What you wrote isn't true, it's mostly from people who worked for us and got angry when they were fired." I'm too busy leading my life.

Pages: 1 2 3