She has now revealed a string of affairs with some of Hollywood’s greatest lotharios including Ryan O’Neal, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson.
“I did have a little thing with those three back in the day,” she admits. “Yeah, they were awesome! All of them. They were all men I have had. I’m friends with all of them, pretty much. I’m pretty sure there’s a couple I’ve forgotten about…”
Born into Hollywood royalty – Melanie is the daughter of Tippi Hedren, star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds – from the start her life was unconventional.
Brought up in California her “best friend” as a child was a fully grown 400lb male lion named Neil – he even used to share her bed when she was 12.
She had started dating the 22-year-old Don Johnson when just 14 after he had starred with her mother in The Harrad Experiment – and three years later shocked audiences in her first major acting role in the film Night Moves.
“Sure I used to do drugs, I used to drink,” she later remembered.
“I was wild. I could do anything I wanted and I did. I had the body of a woman, the feelings of a woman but I was just a headstrong baby. When you’re like that people let you get away with a lot. But it all catches up with you.”
A parade of parties and high-profile relationships followed with the young Melanie linked to some of Tinseltown’s most eligible (and notorious) bachelors including O’Neal, Beatty and Nicholson – but after the attack on the set of Roar and another accident, in which she was hit by a car on LA’s Sunset Boulevard, she made her first serious attempt to ditch the fast living.
“Everything came crashing down,” she said at the time.
“I thought of the accident as God’s way of telling me to slow down and figure out what to do with my life.”
