Hedren owes her acting career to Alfred Hitchcock who discovered the blonde model doing a commercial on the The Today Show show. He cast her in The Birds and then Marnie. She followed the Grace Kelly mold for playing frigid females with a vulnerable core.
The Birds (1963): $500 per week

At the end of shooting Mister Kingstreet's War, she discovered that the big cats used in the production had no place to go and would likely languish in small cages. This prompted her to obtain a parcel of land on her own to establish a home with a natural setting for retired big cats. She named it Shambala and it exists to this day. Mother of Melanie Griffith. Presides over The Roar Foundation, an animal preserve outside of Los Angeles. Director Alfred Hitchcock unsuccessfully pursued a relationship with her during the filming of The Birds. Is a vegetarian She named one of her housecats after Sean Connery, her co-star in Marnie. Lobbying for passage of Shambala Wild Animal Protection Act. Participated in panel at University of Illinois on "Hitchcock, Women and Terror, " October 2001. She smoked for 15 years, but quit when her daughter, actress Melanie Griffith, then 10 years old, came to her after a school health lecture and begged her to stop. 30 January 2003, Received Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame Alfred Hitchcock spotted her in a diet drink commercial on the The Today Show show, and cast her in The Birds. While filming, she was actually cut in the face by a bird in one of the shots. Grandmother of Alexander Bauer, Dakota Johnson, and Stella Banderas. Mother-in-law of Antonio Banderas. Former mother-in-law of Don Johnson and Steven Bauer. Operates an exotic animal sanctuary which prompted her testimony in February 2005 in Riverside Superior Court. Hedren made a complaint regarding animal cruelty by a tiger rescuer and was told by U.S. Department of Agriculture that there were not enough inspectors to respond to her complaint. She eventually made room for a lion rather than have it go to the rescuer. She stated she felt like she was walking through a trash dump. Her store owner father, Bernard, was Swedish and her school teacher mother, Dorathea, was German-Norwegian. Ex-stepmother of Tracy Griffith. Friend of Linda Blair. Has a sister named Patty Davis. She met with Hitchcock and his wife Alma for the final time in London, England in 1966 while she was filming Charlie Chaplin's last film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967). They took her to tea at Claridge's. The atmosphere was tense, because she knew Hitchcock was upset that she had been cast in what was expected to be a big film, and he was unable to hide his bitterness. Her performance as Melanie Daniels in "The Birds" (1963) is ranked #86 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.