Melanie Griffith on Battling Addiction, Dating and Cosmetic Surgery: 'Hopefully I Look More Normal Now'
Melanie Griffith isn’t holding back when it comes to addressing complicated issues from her past.
The actress spoke to Porter magazine for its latest issue, and said she did her best to make sure her addiction struggles and time in rehab didn’t affect her children: Alexander Bauer, 31, Fifty Shades of Grey star Dakota Johnson, 27, and Stella Banderas, 20.
“I was a totally functioning mom. I wasn’t like a drunk-on-the-floor, out-of-it person,” Griffith, 59, says in the new issue, out Friday. “I didn’t do some things I probably should have done but, mostly, I was there for my kids. They had a sort of privileged gypsy life.”
Griffith first entered a rehabilitation program to treat alcohol addiction in 1988, three years after her son was born. The stint led her to reconnect with former husband Don Johnson (the pair briefly married when she was 18) and they were remarried for five years before splitting again for good.
“Don was actually waiting for me when I got out of rehab,” she says about Johnson, with whom she had daughter Dakota. “We got back together; it was the most natural, perfect, loving thing. Then it just sort of wasn’t working. I think it’s hard when you are both in the public eye, unless one of you gives up work.”
The star would go on to marry actor Antonio Banderas in 1996 before filing for divorce in 2014.
“I think part of the reason my marriage to Antonio fell apart was because I was stuck; nobody else is to blame. It’s just that I personally got stuck and I won’t let that happen again, I want to enjoy life, I want to do whatever I want to do,” she says.
As for her dating life now, Griffith admits it’s slow going - a different pace for the bombshell who once dated men like Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Ryan O’Neal.
“I’m shy with men now, very reticent ... nobody has asked me on a date [for almost two years],” Griffith says.
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The onetime Oscar nominee also talks about the moment she decided to make a change after her cosmetic surgery work raised eyebrows.
“No, I didn’t [realize] until people started saying. Oh my god, what has she done?!’” the star admits. “I was so hurt I went to a different doctor and he started dissolving all of this s- that this other woman doctor had put in. Hopefully, I look more normal now.”
To see the full interview with Melanie Griffith, buy the latest issue of Porter, on sale globally this Friday. It is also available as a digital edition.
