Tippi Hedren, the legendary star of the Alfred Hitchcock movies The Birds and Marnie, surfaced this week in a rare public sighting.
The retired actress was celebrating her 96th birthday Monday night with a group of loved ones at the home of her daughter Melanie Griffith.
Hedren’s festivities marked the first time she has been glimpsed out and about since it emerged that she is suffering from dementia and can no longer recall her career.
The grandmother of Dakota Johnson appeared to still be in fine physical shape, walking without the assistance of a wheelchair, a walker or even a cane.
While navigating a set of stars, she linked hands with a young man who appeared to be her grandson Alexander Bauer, 40 – Griffith’s son by her second husband Steven Bauer, whom she was with between her two failed marriages to Don Johnson.
Hedren’s sense of style remained intact as she stepped out in a sleek floral blazer over a flowing purple blouse and black slacks.
Tippi Hedren, the legendary star of the Alfred Hitchcock movies The Birds and Marnie, surfaced in a rare public sighting this week
While navigating a set of stars, she linked hands with a young man who appeared to be her grandson Alexander Bauer, 40
The retired actress was celebrating her 96th birthday Monday night with a group of loved ones at the home of her daughter Melanie Griffith, who is pictured earlier that day
She had also retained her golden hair color, bringing back memories of the peak of her career as one of the iconic ‘Hitchcock blondes.’
As the evening wore on and she was seen emerging from her birthday dinner, she was bundled up against the cold in a monochrome sweater.
Griffith meanwhile emphasized her impressively svelte figure with a fitted black full-sleeved shirt and a set of skintight matching leather trousers.
The Working Girl actress had been seen wearing the same ensemble earlier that day when she stepped out to take her dog for a walk.
Her blonde hair was cropped short and worn in a fashionably messy do, while her luminous complexion was accentuated with makeup including scarlet lipstick.
Last January, less than a year after news broke of Hedren’s diagnosis, Griffith posted to Instagram marking her mother’s 95th birthday – the last time fans got a glimpse of Hedren before this week.
‘My beautiful Mama turned 95 yesterday! She’s happy, healthy and feisty!!’ she wrote over a video of Hedren blowing out the candles on her mint green cake.
Hedren’s representatives confirmed her dementia diagnosis in February 2024, in response to an inquiry by Spanish journalist Gustavo Egusquiza.
Hedren’s festivities marked the first time she has been glimpsed out and about since it emerged that she is suffering from dementia and can no longer recall her career
Nevertheless she appeared to be in fine physical shape, walking without the assistance of a wheelchair, walker or even a cane
Hedren’s sense of style remained intact as she stepped out in a sleek floral blazer over a flowing purple blouse and black slacks
As the evening wore on and she was seen emerging from her birthday dinner, she was bundled up against the cold in a monochrome sweater
She had also retained her golden hair color, bringing back memories of the peak of her career as one of the iconic ‘Hitchcock blondes’
Hedren’s representatives confirmed her dementia diagnosis in February 2024, in response to an inquiry by Spanish journalist Gustavo Egusquiza
When Egusquiza requested an interview with Hedren, her team explained that she was ‘no longer able to be interviewed due to health reasons’
Her representatives added: ‘She has dementia, and is unable to remember her career at all,’ sharing: ‘She just turned 94, so unfortunately, time has taken its toll’
Egusquiza reported on the reply he received and added his own comment: ‘This is devastating news for Tippi Hedren’s fans worldwide’
Hedren has been frank in the past about her fraught working experience with Hitchcock, including in her 2016 memoirs
She described the director, whom she worked with in the mid-1960s, as having been ‘obsessed’ with her during their professional relationship
Even so, Hedren regarded Hitchcock as a ‘brilliant, brilliant filmmaker’ and described a ‘wave of sadness’ she felt upon his death at the age of 80 in 1980
When Egusquiza requested an interview with Hedren, her team explained that she was ‘no longer able to be interviewed due to health reasons.’
Her representatives added: ‘She has dementia, and is unable to remember her career at all. She just turned 94, so unfortunately, time has taken its toll.’
Egusquiza reported on the reply he received and added his own comment: ‘This is devastating news for Tippi Hedren’s fans worldwide.’
Three years earlier, Hedren’s granddaughter Dakota Johnson remarked that she was ‘such a glamorous movie star still. You know, she spends like three hours a day, even if she doesn’t leave the house, getting ready,’ via The Hollywood Reporter.
In the same interview, Johnson explosively said Hitchcock ‘terrorized’ her grandmother and ‘ruined her career because she didn’t wanna sleep with him.’
Johnson added that ‘the thing that she’s been so amazing for me and with my mother is just like: “No, you don’t, you do not put up with that s*** from anybody.”‘
Hedren has been frank in the past about her fraught working experience with Hitchcock, including in her 2016 memoirs.
She described the director, whom she worked with in the mid-1960s, as having been ‘obsessed’ with her during their professional relationship.
The day of her mother’s celebrations, Griffith emphasized her impressively svelte figure with a fitted black full-sleeved shirt and a set of skintight matching leather trousers
The Working Girl actress had been seen wearing the same ensemble earlier that day when she stepped out to take her dog for a walk
Last January, less than a year after news broke of Hedren’s diagnosis, Griffith posted to Instagram marking her mother’s 95th birthday
‘My beautiful Mama turned 95 yesterday! She’s happy, healthy and feisty!!’ she wrote over a video of Hedren blowing out the candles on her mint green cake
Griffith’s outfit included a cross-body phone sling and a set of cat-eye tinted spectacles
He instructed her The Birds co-star Rod Taylor to avoid her, and he himself grew glacial if he caught sight of her speaking to another man on set.
In one ‘awful, awful moment’ in the back of a limousine Hitchcock ‘threw himself on top of me and tried to kiss me,’ she wrote.
During the shoot of The Birds ‘he asked me to touch him, and I’d resisted the temptation to slap him and just turned and walked away.’
After she rebuffed him, he retaliated sadistically by having real birds attack her for a scene instead of using mechanical ones as previously planned.
After having an assistant director tell her the fake birds were malfunctioning, Hitchcock subjected Hedren to days of what she described as ‘ugly, brutal and relentless’ onslaughts by real animals as they filmed the legendary sequence.
Hedren is pictured in a publicity still for her best-remembered movie, Hitchcock’s 1963 classic The Birds, starring her alongside Rod Taylor and based on a story by Daphne du Maurier
She worked for Hitchcock again in the 1964 thriller Marnie, which starred her alongside Sean Connery and was the last of the director’s films to be scored by Bernard Hermann
Later, while they were making Marnie, he ‘suddenly grabbed me and put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse, and it was ugly, and I couldn’t have been more shocked and repulsed. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became.’
She added: ‘Then he started adding threats, as if he could do anything to me that was worse than what he was trying to do at that moment.’
He vowed to ‘ruin your career’ and made good by refusing to release her from her contract while also declining to cast her in any other films.
Even so, Hedren regarded Hitchcock as a ‘brilliant, brilliant filmmaker’ and described a ‘wave of sadness’ she felt upon his death at the age of 80 in 1980.
Near the end of 2017, when the Me Too movement took off, Hedren wrote on Twitter: ‘I dealt with sexual harassment all the time, during my modeling and film career. Hitchcock wasn’t the first. However, I wasn’t going to take it anymore, so I simply walked away and didnt look back.’
She recalled: ‘Hitch said he would ruin my career and I told him to do what he had to do. It has taken 50 years, but it is about time that women started standing up for themselves as they appear to be doing in the Weinstein case. Good for them!’
