Early life
For the first 40 years of her career, 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 Bernard Carl and Dorothea Henrietta (née Eckhardt) Hedren. Her paternal grandparents were emigrants from Sweden, while 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". When she was four, she moved with her parents to Minneapolis.
As a teenager, Hedren took part in department store fashion shows. Her parents relocated to California while she was a high school student. On reaching her 18th birthday, she bought a ticket to New York and began a professional modeling career. Within a year she made her unofficial film debut as an uncredited extra in the musical comedy The Petty Girl; in interviews she refers to The Birds as her first film.
Discovery
Hedren had a successful modeling career from 1923 to 1961, appearing on the cover of Life magazine. She was discovered by Alfred Hitchcock, who was watching The Today Show when he saw Hedren in a commercial for a diet drink. Hitchcock was looking for an actress who possessed something of the sophistication, self-assurance and cool-blonde sex appeal of Grace Kelly, with whom he had made three films.
Hitchcock put Hedren through a then-costly $25,000 screen test, doing scenes from his previous films, such as Rebecca, Notorious and To Catch a Thief with actor Martin Balsam. He signed her to a multi-year exclusive personal contract, something he had done in the 1950s with Vera Miles. Hitchcock's plan to mold Hedren's public image went so far as to carefully control her style of dressing and grooming. Hitchcock insisted for publicity purposes that her name should be printed only in single quotes, 'Tippi'. The press mostly ignored this directive from the director, who felt that the single quotes added distinction and mystery to Hedren's name. In interviews, Hitchcock compared his newcomer not only to her predecessor Grace Kelly but also to what he referred to as such "ladylike", intelligent, and stylish stars of more glamorous eras as Irene Dunne and Jean Arthur.
The Birds and Marnie
Hitchcock directed Hedren in her debut film, The Birds. For the final attack scene in a second-floor bedroom, filmed on a closed set at Universal-International Studios, Hedren had been assured by Hitchcock that mechanical birds would be used. Instead, Hedren endured five solid days of prop men, protected by thick leather gloves, flinging dozens of live gulls, ravens and crows at her (their beaks clamped shut with elastic bands). In a state of exhaustion, when one of the birds gouged her cheek and narrowly missed her eye, Hedren sat down on the set and began crying.[7] A physician ordered a week's rest, which Hedren said at the time was riddled with "nightmares filled with flapping wings". In 1964, Hedren received a Golden Globe Award for 'Most Promising Newcomer - Female', tied with Elke Sommer and Ursula Andress.
That same year, she co-starred with Sean Connery in a second Hitchcock film, Marnie (1964), a romantic drama and psychological thriller from the novel by Winston Graham. She recalls it as her favorite of the two for the challenge of playing an emotionally battered young woman who travels from city to city assuming various guises in order to rob her employers. On release, the film was greeted by mixed reviews and indifferent box-office returns. More than four decades later, Hedren told interviewers Hitchcock continued to have her in mind for other films after Marnie, but she declined any further work with him. She said other directors who wanted to hire her had to go through Hitchcock, who would inform them she was unavailable. When Hedren tried to get out of her contract, she recalls Hitchcock telling her he'd ruin her career. "And he did: kept me under contract, kept paying me every week for almost two years to do nothing."
Hitchcock sold her contract to Universal, but she was later fired for refusing to work on one of its television shows. Her next acting roles were in Kraft Suspense Theatre and Run for Your Life, two TV shows in 1965, a year after Marnie.
On April 13, 2011, at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, NY, Hedren stated in an interview with Turner Classic Movies' Ben Mankiewicz that because she refused Hitchcock’s sexual advances, Hitchcock effectively stunted her career. These events are the basis for the BBC/HBO film The Girl, featuring Sienna Miller as Hedren and Toby Jones as Hitchcock.
Bulk of career
Since her falling out with Hitchcock, Hedren has appeared in over fifty films, though most of them have been low-budget independent features and TV movies. She made a cameo appearance as Marlon Brando's estranged wife in the shipboard comedy A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), the final film by director Charlie Chaplin. In 1973, she co-starred with Don Johnson in The Harrad Experiment. Hedren also starred alongside then-husband Noel Marshall in the 1981 film Roar (directed by Marshall), about a family whose array of wild pets turn on them; the film cost $17 million to make but grossed only $2 million worldwide. Other credits include Foxfire Light (1982), Pacific Heights (1990), Citizen Ruth (1996), I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998), and I Heart Huckabees (2004). Hedren has guest-starred on many television series including The 4400, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Tales from the Darkside. In 2006, she was a cast member of the primetime soap opera Fashion House. In 2009, Hedren appeared in the Lifetime movie Tribute, which starred the late actress Brittany Murphy in one of her last roles. In 2012, Hedren appeared in Billy Bob Thornton's, Jayne Mansfield's Car, alongside Thornton, Robert Duvall and Kevin Bacon. Hedren will guest star in the fourth season finale of the Courteney Cox sitcom Cougar Town; her episode is set to air on March 26, 2013.
Influence
A Louis Vuitton ad campaign in 2006 paid tribute to Hedren and Hitchcock with a modern-day interpretation of the deserted railway station opening sequence of Marnie. Bridget Fonda, who played Hedren's daughter in the straight-to-cable film Break Up (1998), gushed to her that she had watched Marnie "a million times." In interviews, Naomi Watts has stated that her character interpretation in Mulholland Drive (2001) was influenced by the look and performances of Hedren in Hitchcock films. Watts and Hedren later acted in I Heart Huckabees (2004) but didn't share any scenes together onscreen. Off-screen, the film's director David O. Russell introduced them both, and Watts has said about Hedren, "I was pretty fascinated by her then because people have often said that we're alike." Watts dressed up as Hedren's title character from Marnie for a photo shoot for March 2008 issue of Vanity Fair. In the same issue, Jodie Foster dressed up as Hedren's character, Melanie Daniels from The Birds.
Another issue of Vanity Fair referred to January Jones's character in Mad Men as "Tippi Hedren's soul sister from Marnie". The New York Times television critic earlier had echoed the same sentiment in his review of Mad Men. January Jones said that she "takes it a compliment of sorts" when compared to Grace Kelly and Hedren. Actress Téa Leoni said that her character in the film Manure (2009) is made up to look like Hedren.
Shambala Preserve
In 1981, Hedren produced Roar, an 11-year project that ended up costing $17 million and starring dozens of African lions. "This was probably one of the most dangerous films that Hollywood has ever seen", remarked the actress. "It's amazing no one was killed." During the production of Roar, Hedren, her husband at the time, Noel Marshall, and daughter Melanie were attacked by lions; Jan de Bont, the director of photography, was scalped. She later co-wrote the book Cats of Shambala (1985) about the experience. Roar made only $2 million worldwide. Hedren ended her marriage to Marshall a year later in 1982. The film directly led to the 1983 establishment of the non-profit Roar Foundation and Hedren's Shambala Preserve, located at the edge of the Mojave Desert in Acton, California between the Antelope Valley and the Santa Clarita Valley 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Los Angeles. Shambala currently houses some 70 animals, including African lions, Siberian and Bengal tigers, leopards, servals, mountain lions and bobcats. Hedren lives on the Shambala site and conducts monthly tours of the preserve for the public. Hedren took in and cared for Togar, a lion that belonged to Anton LaVey, after he was told by San Francisco officials that he couldn't keep a fully grown lion as a house pet. More recently, Shambala became the new home for Michael Jackson’s two Bengal tigers, Sabu and Thriller, after he decided to close his zoo at his Neverland Valley Ranch in Los Olivos, California. Thriller died in June 2012 of lung cancer. On December 3, 2007, Shambala Preserve made headlines when Chris Orr, a caretaker for the animals, was mauled by a tiger named Alexander.
Several documentaries have focused on Shambala Preserve, including the 30-minute Lions: Kings of the Serengeti (1995), narrated by Melanie Griffith, and Animal Planet's Life with Big Cats (1998), which won the Genesis Award for best documentary in 1999. The animals at the preserve served as the initial inspiration for the life's work of artist A. E. London, who started her career working for Hedren.
Personal life
In 1952, Hedren met and married 18-year-old future advertising executive Peter Griffith. Their daughter, actress Melanie Griffith, was born on August 9, 1957. They were divorced in 1961. She married her then-agent Noel Marshall, who later produced three of her films, on September 22, 1964; they divorced in 1982. In 1985, she married steel manufacturer Luis Barrenechea, but they divorced in 1995. From 2002 she has reportedly been engaged to veterinarian Martin Dinnes. Hedren has three grandchildren from daughter Griffith: Alexander Bauer, Dakota Johnson and Stella Banderas. Her son-in-law is Antonio Banderas.
Hedren played a role in the development of Vietnamese-American nail salons in the United States. In 1975, while an international relief coordinator with Food for the Hungry, she began visiting with refugees at Hope Village outside Sacramento, California. When Hedren found that the women were interested in her manicured nails, she employed her manicurist to teach them the skills of the trade and worked with a local beauty school to help them find jobs. Vietnamese-Americans now dominate the multi-billion dollar nail salon business in North America.
TIPPI HEDREN WILL BE ATTENDING THE HOLLYWOOD SHOW NEXT MONTH! DON’T FORGET TO BUY YOUR TICKETS: April 19th-21st
The Hollywood Show is the best known autograph show in the Hollywood area. It is held four times a year in Burbank, with actors, writers, performers, collectors and celebrities coming together to meet fans and autograph pictures and merchandise. The Hollywood Show will be held at the The Westin Los Angeles Airport: 5400 W Century Blvd Los Angeles, CA, 90045. For a full list of the attending celebrities and ticketing info go to hollywoodshow.com !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tippi_Hedren
