Tippi Hedren is probably best known for her starring roles in Alfred Hitchcock's films,
The Birds and Marnie. Then she disappeared. This is the untold truth of Tippi Hedren.
Born Nathalie Kay Hedren on Jan. 19, 1930, in New Ulm, Minnesota,
to parents of German and Scandinavian descent, Tippi Hedren was very much a midwestern girl.
Her father, Bernard Hedren, owned a general store, and her mother, Dorathea, was a school teacher.
Although her birth certificate states her name as "Nathalie Kay,"
Hedren is known to the rest of the world as "Tippi." This was actually a nickname given to her
as a baby by her father. The pet name ended up sticking,
and Tippi continued to use the name in her professional life in honor of her father.
Tippi spent most of her childhood in Minnesota, where her blonde hair and
good looks started to win notice from local fashion shows and advertisers.
However, when she was a junior in high school, she and her parents had to leave Minnesota
when her father's health started failing. The family ended up relocating to San Diego,
California in the hopes that the warmer climate would prove helpful.
Luckily, Tippi Hedren's classic features and blonde beauty attracted just as much notice
in California as they did in Minnesota. She was still able to continue her modeling career after
her family made their big move further west - and being in California actually gave the young
Hedren even more opportunities to advance her career in the entertainment industry.
While she was mostly focused on modeling, Hedren managed to get her first film gig — a bit part in
the movie The Pretty Girl – during her first year studying art at Pasadena City College.
In 1951, Hedren moved to New York,
and with her lovely looks, her face soon appeared on many fashion magazine covers.
Later on, Hedren would start appearing in television commercials.
At this point, she was a single mother, having just divorced her first husband, and commercial
work helped pay the bills. And not only did the commercials help provide Hedren a stable living
for herself and her daughter, but they would help jumpstart her career into real films.
After her first divorce, Tippi Hedren left New York to return to California. It was in
California that Hedren was discovered by the iconic film director Alfred Hitchcock. After
seeing her in a diet drink commercial, Hitchcock offered her a seven-year contract. Soon after,
Hedren landed the starring role of Melanie Daniels in Hitchcock's 1963 cult horror movie, The Birds.
"That was the commercial that Alfred Hitchcock saw
and he said to his people at Universal, 'Find the girl.''
As most would assume, Hedren believed that the actual killer birds would be fake.
But Hedren was shocked to learn that she would be acting with real birds.
The crew claimed that the mechanical birds weren't working — a claim that is suspected
of having been perpetuated by Hitchcock himself as an excuse to use the live birds.
Not only did Hedren have to film her scene with live birds thrown directly at her,
but a few were actually loosely tied to her costume. And the birds did exactly what they
were trained to do — attack, claw, and peck her. Hedren even sustained some
injuries during filming, including a bad cut near her eye from one of the birds' beaks.
Despite the almost unbearable pain Tippi Hedren had to endure while filming The Birds, the movie
did turn out to be a massive hit with critics and audiences. Hedren herself received high praise and
acclaim for her performance in the starring role. In fact, The Birds would lead to Hedren receiving
her first and only Golden Globe award in 1964 for "Most Promising Female Newcomer." This is
now a defunct Golden Globe award category today but still a highly prominent award.
It looked like Hedren's star was on the rise. She just had a hit movie with a starring breakout
role, fame, prestige, and Alfred Hitchcock had cast her in the titular role of his
latest film — the psychological thriller, Marnie. Hedren was going places in 1964.
But no one knew the true horror that Hedren was fighting behind the scenes.
As dramatized in the 2012 film The Girl,
Hedron and HItchcock's relationship was anything but stable.
Working with a renowned director like Alfred Hitchcock should have guaranteed Tippi Hedren
instant success. And it did — for a while. After receiving such praise and fame for The Birds,
Hedren looked like she was going to be Hollywood's biggest star.
But behind the silver screen, Hedren was dealing with a real, live monster — Hitchcock himself.
Hitchcock was a brilliant director, but he was also a notoriously awful bully.
Hitchcock had become obsessed with the beautiful, blonde Hedren. As much as he coached Hedren while
on set, Hitchcock wanted total control over her. In an interview with The Virginian-Pilot,
Hedren recalled how Hitchcock would never let anyone on set talk to her or
have anything to do with her. He even tried to dictate what clothes she wore in public.
Then he started making unwanted advances, harassing Hedren at every turn.
"I love you."
Hedren would have nothing to do with Hitchcock's advances and wouldn't stand for his treatment,
much to the director's rage. As a sick joke, Hitchcock apparently sent Hedren's daughter,
Melanie, a toy coffin containing a doll made up to look like her mother. The young Melanie was
terrified. Eventually, Hedren couldn't tolerate working with Hitchcock anymore. After finishing
Marnie, Hedren said she wouldn't work with him again and wanted out of her contract.
After suffering too long while working under Alfred Hitchcock,
Tippi Hedren knew she couldn't work with him anymore — she wanted out of her original
seven-year contract. Furious at Hedren's rejection, Hitchcock refused to release Hedren
from her contract and threatened to destroy her entire career. But no amount of threats would make
it worth it for Hedren to endure Hitchcock's harassment any longer. Hedren told Variety,
"When he told me that he would ruin me, I just told him do what he had to do. I went out of
the door and slammed it so hard that I looked back to see if it was still on its hinges."
Unfortunately, at that point, Hitchcock was still able to wield power over Hedren's career.
He held fast to that seven-year contract — Hedren would be paid,
but she never performed. Hitchcock not only refused to cast her in any more pictures,
but he wouldn't allow any other studio to cast her either. In the 60s, Hedren
was considered a "hot" actress — meaning that she was popular and highly regarded.
Other studios were dying to work with her.
But whenever a studio executive inquired with Hitchcock about working with Hedren,
he would tell them she wasn't available. He blocked any promising career opportunity for
the actress. It was three years before Hedren was finally free of the director for good.
"It's the worst thing to be the object of someone's obsession if you're not interested."
After she was finally free of Alfred Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren needed to rebuild. Hitchcock,
unfortunately, had done a number on her acting career. While once she was considered
an in-demand actress, by the time Hedren's contract with Hitchcock was finally over,
Hollywood had noticeably cooled towards her. As noted by Variety, she'd just spent too much
time away from the big screen and major projects. Although her career would never be the same again,
Hedren still fought to carve out space for herself in the entertainment industry.
However, Hedren did manage to find some modest success in television.
She did a few TV movies, and also landed a few regular roles on soap operas, sitcoms,
and other TV shows. In addition to her TV work, Hedren was also able to devote a lot of time to
animal welfare causes. And despite her troubles in Hollywood, Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith,
became a major Hollywood film actress, as did Hedren's granddaughter, actress Dakota Johnson.
In the 1970s, during the height of the Vietnam War, Tippi Hedren was doing humanitarian work
with Vietnamese refugees. One such endeavor involved Hedren working with 20 Vietnamese
refugee women and helping them to resettle in the United States. And the women were apparently quite
fascinated by Hedren's manicured fingernails, as Hedren explained in an interview with the BBC:
"We were trying to find vocations for them. I brought in seamstresses and typists — any
way for them to learn something. And they loved my fingernails."
This gave Hedren an idea. She brought her personal manicurist to the Hope Village
refugee camp in California to show the women how to do professional, Beverly Hills-style manicures.
Hedren also recruited the local beauty schools to take the women on as students.
Upon graduating from beauty school, the students got jobs all over Southern California
thanks to Hedren's help. In recalling the experience, Hedren said in an interview:
"I loved these women so much that I wanted something good to happen
for them after losing literally everything."
And these refugee women were incredibly bright — most of them were the wives of
military officers, and at least one of them was in military intelligence. As noted by NPR,
Hedren may have been the initial spark that helped jumpstart the Vietnamese-American nail industry,
but these women were the ones who turned it into an $8 billion industry.
Roar is considered one of the most dangerous films ever made. It was very much a family
picture — literally. It starred Tippi Hedren with her second husband, Noel Marshall, who wrote,
directed, and produced the film. Marshall's sons, John and Jerry, also acted in the movie, along
with Hedren's daughter, Melanie. Also starring alongside the family was a legion of big cats.
The film was about a family on a wildlife preserve,
and the filming of the movie itself was definitely wild. There were multiple instances of people on
set getting injured from altercations with the animals, who were apparently not as
well trained as expected. In fact, according to IndieWire, the tagline for Roar became,
"No animals were harmed in the making of this movie. 70 members of the cast and crew were."
Among those injured on the set included Hedren and her family. Hedren had to get 38 stitches
after being bitten by a lion and also endured a fractured leg and multiple scalp wounds.
Her husband was injured so many times he ended up in the hospital for gangrene.
Daughter Melanie was mauled so badly by a lion that she needed facial reconstructive surgery.
The movie's filming was supposed to take only nine months, but the entire project
ended up taking five years to complete. Roar cost
$17 million to make, and the movie only made $2 million after it was finally released.
Besides acting, Tippi Hedren's other greatest love is animals — especially big cats.
Even the ordeal of filming Roar never dampened her passion for them.
She apparently was always a cat person and has owned many house cats over the years.
At one point, she was engaged to veterinarian Martin Dinnes.
The story goes that the two of them broke up over their differing opinions on declawing cats.
He was pro-declawing, and Hedren was against it. This extreme difference of opinion
apparently made it impossible to keep their relationship together, and the two broke up.
In the 70s, Hedren became a great animal and conservation advocate,
which eventually led her to establish the Shambala Preserve for wild cats.
Hedren explained to The Los Angeles Times that Shambala was strictly for protecting
and preserving these magnificent animals. Hedren told the newspaper:
"There is no breeding, no buying and no selling. When an animal comes here, it is here for life."
In fact, at one point, Hedren had a real pet lion named Neil living in her house. Life
Magazine did a full photo spread of Neil living in Hedren's home among the family. Although,
Hedren later admitted that a lion in the house was probably not a great idea, in retrospect.
Still, Hedren's granddaughter, Dakota Johnson, confirmed during a
2020 appearance on The Graham Norton Show that her 91-year-old grandmother to this
day is still happily living on the preserve with, quote, "13 or 14 lions and tigers."
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