Celebrity Nooz: Tippi Hedren

Tippi Hedren (Actress) - The Birds, Marnie

Updated: 10/13/11

Name: Tippi Hedren

Birth Name: Nathalie Kay Hedren

Born: January 19, 1930, New Ulm, Minnesota

Claim To Fame: She is best known for her roles in the Alfred Hitchcock films, The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964).

Family Life: Hedren has been married three times. Her first marriage was to actor/producer Peter Griffith in 1952; they divorced in 1961. They have a daughter, actress Melanie Griffith, who was born in 1957. She then married her agent Noel Marshall in 1964, and they divorced in 1982. She was married to businessman Luis Barrenechea from 1985 until 1995. Hedren has three grandchildren from daughter Griffith: musician Alexander Bauer, actress and model Dakota Johnson and Stella Banderas.

Info: Hedren got her start as a teenager in department store fashion shows. When she turned 18, she moved to New York and started a professional modeling career. Her first role was as a model in The Pretty Girl musical comedy (1950).

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Hedren had a successful modeling career and was discovered by Alfred Hitchcock when he noticed her in a commercial for the diet drink Sego.

Hitchcock signed her to a multi-year contract and cast her in his 1963 classic film The Birds. She also starred in Marnie (1964), a psychological thriller from the novel by Winston Graham, co-starring with Sean Connery.

Hedren appeared in over 40 films between 1967 and 2006, including Charlie Chaplin's comedy A Countess from Hong Kong (1967).

Trivia: Was described as being a pivotal figure in the modern development of Vietnamese owned-nail salons in the United States.

Her paternal grandparents were immigrants from Sweden, and her maternal ancestry was German and Norwegian.

Her father gave her the nickname "Tippi."

Premiere magazine chose Hedren's character, Melanie Daniels in The Birds as one of "The 100 Greatest Characters of All Time".

Where Are They Now: Recent roles include a co-starring role with actress Brittany Murphy in the 2009 made-for-television movie Tribute. She portrays Mrs. Peabody in the 2011 satirical film Return to Babylon, and plays the role of Betty in the 2011 horror film Cousin Sarah.

Hedren dedicates a lot of her time to her Shambala Preserve, which currently houses some 70 animals, including African lions, Siberian and Bengal tigers, leopards, servals, mountain lions and bobcats. She lives on the Shambala site (which is located near the Mojave Desert in Acton, California) and conducts monthly tours of the preserve for the public.

The Shambala Preserve was the result of Hedren's production Roar, an 11-year project that ended up costing $17 million and starring dozens of African lions. Shambala was the home of 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. For more information on the Preserve, visit http://www.shambala.org/.

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