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.



Marnie (1964): $600/per week
The Birds (1963): $500 per week

At the end of shooting Mister Kingstreet's War (1973), 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. Presides over The Roar Foundation, an animal preserve outside of Los Angeles. Is a vegetarian. Lobbying for passage of Shambala Wild Animal Protection Act. Her first television commercial was for a cigarette brand in the early 1950s. She learned to smoke for the commercial, because she felt viewers would know if she was faking it. Her smoking habit lasted for 15 years until her daughter, actress Melanie Griffith, then 10 years old, came to her after a school health lecture and begged her to stop. Alfred Hitchcock saw her in a 1962 commercial aired during the "Today" (1952) show and cast her in The Birds (1963). In the commercial for a diet drink, she is seen walking down a street and a man whistles at her slim, attractive figure, and she turns her head with an acknowledging smile. In the opening scene of The Birds (1963), the same thing happens as she walks toward the bird shop. This was an inside joke by Hitchcock. Mother-in-law of Antonio Banderas. Former mother-in-law of Don Johnson and Steven Bauer. Her store owner father, Bernard, was Swedish and her school teacher mother, Dorathea, was German-Norwegian. Friend of Linda Blair, Rod Taylor and Diane McBain. She met with Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville for the final time in London, England, in 1966, while she was filming Charles 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. Is left-handed. Attended Suzanne Pleshette's funeral in 2008. They starred together in The Birds (1963). Requested director Alfred Hitchcock to give her the fur coat that she wore in The Birds (1963), and he graciously gave it to her but charged it to the production company. Eventually, she stopped wearing fur after she became an animal rights activist. Of all her films, Marnie (1964) continues to be her favorite film, because of the complex title character. This is even more telling, considering all the problems that reportedly took place during the filming, which spelled the end of her professional relationship with the film's director Alfred Hitchcock, as well as the mixed critical reception and the indifferent box office results upon the film's release.