Tippi Hedren’s Animal Paradise
Tippi Hedren did not want to be an actress. She had a successful modeling career, loved being a mother and was happy living in New York. Then her marriage fell apart. She moved to Los Angeles with her 4-year old daughter Melanie Griffith and rented a home in Sherman Oaks. In 1961, Alfred Hitchcock saw Hedren in a tv commercial for a diet drink called Sego. He was taken by her beauty and “well-bred” quality. He gave her a screen test and signed her to a seven-year acting contract.
Hitchcock became Hedren’s personal acting coach and mentor. Her screen debut was the 1963 film The Birds. She said, “I probably learned in three years what it would have taken me 15 years to learn otherwise.” Her early experience with Hitchcock was wonderful. But he proved to be a bully. During production on The Birds, he subjected Hedren to intense filming days including live bird attacks that gouged her cheek and nearly took out her eye.
Hitchcock cast her in his next film Marnie about an emotionally battered woman. The director became possessive. According to Donald Spoto’s book The Dark Side of Genius, Hitchcock “advised her on what she should eat, whom she should see, and how she should live. He told the cast and crew they were not allowed to talk to her.” Her co-star Rod Taylor said, “No one was permitted to come physically close to her during the production.”
