Tippi Hedren has been married three times, including to Peter Griffith and Noel Marshall
Tippi Hedren has been married three times, and that’s enough for her.
The screen legend’s love life has had almost as many twists as the plots devised by frequent collaborator Alfred Hitchcock. She alleged in her memoir Tippi that the director, whom she worked on Marnie and The Birds with, was so obsessed with her that he ruined her career after she rebuffed his advances.
As for her personal relationships, she doesn’t regret any of them — though she’s in no hurry to jump into another romance anytime soon.
“My marriages were all good — until they weren’t. But I got something good out of each of them,” she told Express in 2016. “I’d love to have a man in my life and to go on dates but I’ll never marry again. I like living alone. I’m vain and I’m also selfish. Who would want that in a woman?”
Here’s a look back at Tippi Hedren’s relationships and marriages.
Peter Griffith
Hedren met former child actor Peter Griffith on the set of The Aldrich Family in 1951. At the time, Hedren was 21 and he was just 17 years old. On Oct. 24, 1951, a day after Griffith’s 18th birthday, the pair got a marriage license in New York City; they officially tied the knot in 1952.
Griffith left acting and became an advertising executive, and the couple welcomed their daughter, Melanie Griffith, on Aug. 9, 1957. Hedren and Griffith separated in 1959 and finalized their divorce in 1960. After the split, Melanie divided her time between her father’s home in N.Y.C. and Hedren’s Shambala Preserve near Los Angeles.
Griffith married four more times. In 2020, Melanie posted on Instagram about his second wife, Nanita Rose Greene, crediting Greene for helping to raise her after Hedren and Griffith’s divorce.
Through Melanie, Hedren has three grandchildren: Dakota Johnson, Stella Banderas and Alexander Bauer.
Mort Sahl
Following her split from Griffith, Hedren dated comedian Mort Sahl in the early 1960s. Not much is known of their relationship, save for Hedren’s first mention in Variety in 1962: The magazine announced that she was cast in Hitchcock’s The Birds, but referred to her merely as “Mort Sahl’s gal friend.”
While The Birds was filming, Hedren was considered Sahl’s “steady girlfriend,” as author James Curtis wrote in Last Man Standing: Mort Sahl and the Birth of Modern Comedy. Sahl was reportedly also seeing actress Julie Newmar at the time.
Noel Marshall
On Sept. 27, 1964, Hedren, then 28, married her agent and manager, Noel Marshall. Marshall was previously married to his agency partner Jaye Joseph, with whom he shared sons John and Jerry.
In 1969, Hedren and Marshall took a trip to a game preserve in Mozambique while Hedren filmed Satan’s Harvest in Zimbabwe. At the preserve, the pair toured a house where 30 lions lived, and the couple decided to make a movie based on the experience, according to the New Yorker.
Marshall co-wrote, directed and starred in Roar alongside Hedren (also a co-writer), 17-year-old Melanie Griffith and his sons. The film focuses on a wildlife researcher and his family, who visit him in Africa and find his home overrun by large wild cats, including lions and tigers. The couple purchased a ranch to film the project as well as 132 big cats and other exotic animals that they began training for the project.
The filming process resulted in a slew of injuries to the cast and crew: Hedren and Marshall got gangrene, for which Hedren needed skin grafts to treat; Griffith got 50 stitches after a lion clawed one of her eyes; Marshall got blood poisoning and was bitten at least 11 times; cinematographer Jan de Bont (who later directed blockbusters like Speed and Twister) required 120 stitches after a cat tore off his scalp. There were reportedly 70 animal attacks during production.
Roar went millions over budget, forcing Hedren and Marshall to pay for much of the production from their own pockets, and the film took 11 years to complete.
In 1982, Hedren filed for divorce from Marshall, accused him of physical abuse and got a restraining order against him prohibiting him from coming within 20 feet of her or her home. She told Express in 2016 that she had two titanium plates inserted because the vertebrae in her neck “were shot” and that she still slept with a neck brace as a result of her injuries from Roar.
The experience may have cost Hedren her romantic relationship with Marshall, but it didn’t hinder her love for big cats. She still lives on the ranch where they filmed Roar, now called the Shambala Preserve. Numerous predatory cats reside in the preserve, where they are cared for by trained veterinarians, per its website. ABC News reported that the feline residents once included Michael Jackson’s tigers.
Luis Barrenechea
Hedren married businessman Luis Barrenechea on Feb. 15, 1985. The couple split their time between the Shambala Preserve and their homes in Arcadia and Palm Springs, California. According to Desert Magazine, Barrenechea purchased their Palm Springs house, previously owned by actor William Holden, in 1992.
Hedren’s marriage to the retired steel manufacturer lasted nine years; she filed for divorce in 1994. “I shouldn’t be married,” she told the Los Angeles Times that year.
In 2016, Hedren candidly told Express: “My third [husband] Luis Barrenechea was everything I wanted in a man, except that he was an alcoholic and that was unbearable.”
Martin Dinnes
Hedren’s last publicly known relationship was with Shambala veterinarian Martin R. Dinnes, who was one of the first veterinarians to practice modern-day medicine on exotic animals. Dinnes was 11 years Hedren’s junior; the couple announced their engagement in April 2002. However, the pair split in 2008 without ever tying the knot.
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