Yes, it’s true: Tippi Hedren and her second husband brought up not only their kids in a desert home near Hollywood, but also baby lion cubs. No, it’s false: The doll that Alfred Hitchcock had made of Hedren and gave to her daughter, Melanie Griffith, did not come in its own little casket. Yes, it’s true: Hitchock tried every trick in the book to woo Hedren, plucked out of modeling obscurity to star in The Birds, into a relationship. And then, upon her rebuttal, put her in another film, Marnie, during which he continued to harass and stalk her.

Tippi Hedren had a strange and long-standing career in Hollywood, where she found the lines between her onscreen and offscreen lives intersecting in ways she was not happy about --- including starring in the film The Harrad Experiment, in which Griffith was cast as a teen extra, met the older Don Johnson and ran away to live with him at the young age of 15. Hedren’s confidential yet conversational tone keeps you riveted, wishing you were sitting poolside with her in Hollywood, mining through the details of her well-lived life. She weaves some fascinating tales about truly living life to its fullest --- her animal activism and the creation of her own wildlife preserve in California called Shambala; her close and loving relationships with her daughter and her equally famous granddaughter (Dakota Johnson of 50 Shades of Grey), as well as her stepchildren and her kids’ friends; her love life, including her first marriage and her last attempt at love much later in life; and her work with Hitchcock, as well as with Charlie Chaplin on his last film.

"TIPPI gives us a thorough and elegantly written but rewardingly honest account of one Hollywood starlet from the contract days who managed to move into the modern age with aplomb, on her own terms and with fierce determination to do right for others wherever she could."

TIPPI is a triumph of Hollywood memoirs. Most of the book recounts Hedren’s love of animals and her process of making a film about a family living with lions, called Roar, a project that ate up all her money and almost got her (and several others) literally eaten up by the wild animals she tried to take care of. Jan de Bont, the famous cinematographer and director, actually got SCALPED at one point by one of the lions that lived in her home and starred in Roar. Her own daughter had bites taken out of her extremities, and her husband endured all sorts of traumas from the film situation and “the Exorcist Curse” (so called because he produced William Peter Blatty’s adaptation of THE EXORCIST and suffered many slings and arrows trying to get what he was owed from that project for years).

They moved from the Hollywood Hills to a desert farm where they could house and care for all the animals they were adopting (at one point there were cheetahs, lions, domesticated animals and one bull elephant). Then that home, which had been outfitted with studio and production space during the filming of Roar, suffered water damage during a flood and fire damage during wildfires.

In between, Hedren continued to act and take care of her children. She also worked with Vietnamese women, helping them create a union in their country for female manicurists in order to micro-fund small businesses that widows and other single women could open so they could care for their families. She has put her time, energy and heart where her money is, laying her entire life on the line to help others, be they human or wild animals.

TIPPI gives us a thorough and elegantly written but rewardingly honest account of one Hollywood starlet from the contract days who managed to move into the modern age with aplomb, on her own terms and with fierce determination to do right for others wherever she could. You will fall in love with her, as have so many others in the past, but also admire her for never staying stuck in the past. Tippi Hedren is as vital now as she ever has been, and this tome is a testament to her brave and determined spirit and her wide capacity to love all of God’s creatures on this big blue marble.