Page 28 - ABILITY Magazine - Avril Lavigne Issue

B
est known for her roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie and The Birds, Tippi
Hedren was well down the runway as a model, when she caught the legendary
filmmaker’s attention in a TV commercial one day. That set her on a path to
appear in over 80 films and TV shows. Mother of Melanie Griffith (Something Wild, Work- ing Girl) and grandmother of Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey, The Social Network), Hedren’s greatest passion is animal rights. More than three decades ago she founded Sham- bala Preserve, an 80-acre wildlife habitat at the edge of the Mojave Desert in California. The preserve later became home to Michael Jackson’s Bengal tigers, Sabu and Thriller, after he closed his zoo at Neverland Valley Ranch. Hedren was also instrumental in the development of Vietnamese-American nail salons in the 70’s, when she was an internation- al relief coordinator visiting displaced persons in Sacramento. The Vietnamese women there expressed interest in her painted nails, and she not only employed her manicurist to teach them the trade, but also helped them find jobs. That experience became the focus of Happy Hands, which won Best Documentary Short at the Sonoma International Film Festi- val in 2014. Hedren recently spoke with ABILITY’s Lia Martirosyan and Chet Cooper.
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Photos by Bill Dow