Tippi Hedren felt "sheer panic" when she realised her daughter Melanie Griffith was attracted to Don Johnson.

Tippi Hedren

Tippi Hedren

The 87-year-old screen legend admitted she had her misgivings when the couple first got together because of the eight-year age gap between them, with the 'Working Girl' star aged just 14 when they first met.

Tippi recalled: "They were two beautiful, wonderful people, and here, my daughter was showing signs that I had never seen before in her, with an older man, and there was just sheer panic.

"How do you handle that? There was a very strong attachment between the two of them."

Melanie and Don had met, when they, along with Tippi, were filming 'The Harrad Experiment' and the former couple - who married for six months in 1976 and then again from 1989 to 1995 - admitted there was an instant spark between them.

Don, now 68, recalled to The Hollywood Reporter: "We were in the stairwell of this Anheuser-Busch Estate waiting for a set-up. We started chitchatting."

Melanie, 60, added: "I thought he was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen."

Though Don and Melanie are no longer together, they remain very close and their daughter, 'Fifty Shades of Grey' star Dakota Johnson joked she's needed therapy to cope with their unusual relationship.

She quipped: "I keep my therapist on speed dial."

Tippi was infamously harassed by director Alfred Hitchcock and eventually refused to make another movie with him, despite being locked into a seven-year contract.

And the strength of 'The Birds' star has been passed down through the generations.

Melanie said of her mother: "She became an example of what to never let happen in my life.

"Hopefully, I've passed that on to Dakota -- to be strong in your work and in yourself."

Dakota said: "I was taught self-respect and grace and strength. Never before this moment did anyone in my family [explicitly] say, like, 'Be careful.' Sometimes, powerful men in Hollywood will try to whatever."

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