Tracy Griffith was born in Manhattan to actress Nanita Greene and producer Peter Griffith and was raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She went to boarding school in Maryland and graduated with a BFA from the University of Tennessee. While at U. Tenn., she began her acting career and appeared in several plays at the Clarence Brown Theatre.

Tracy has worked in Atlanta, Manhattan, and Los Angeles in a wide variety of occupations including hospitality (resorts, restaurants, and yachts), fine arts (painting and finishing & restoring) and sports (SCUBA instructor, sailing, and equestrian competition), and the film & television industry. She's not only been an actress for ten years, she's also a screenwriter and a musician who plays the guitar and sings...and sometimes even plays the fiddle.

Her television career began in New York, where she appeared in the daytime soap The Guiding Light. Director Leonard Nimoy then cast Tracy in the role of "Babe" in her first feature film, The Good Mother, which starred Diane Keaton and Liam Neeson. Nimoy said of Tracy, "I needed a saucy redhead with a twinkling eye. That was Tracy." Hollywood beckoned and Tracy soon got her first starring role opposite Lou Diamond Phillips in the feature The First Power. She went on to star with Rob Lowe in The Finest Hour (a.k.a. Desert Shield, perhaps to distinguish it from the Battle of Britain) and starred with Teri Hatcher in the comedy All Tied Up, which also starred Zach Galligan, known for his role in the Gremlins pictures. Other starring roles include David Wall's Sundance-selected independent Joe and Joe, the New Line Cinema action feature Skeeter, and TriStar's Crazy in Alabama, starring her half-sister, Melanie Griffith, and directed by Melanie's husband, Antonio Banderas.

Tracy's family is a rather showbiz-oriented one: there's Melanie, of course, who has a plethora of film & television credits (visit her web site here); Tracy's brother Clay, an award-winning Production Designer whose most recent well-known effort, Almost Famous, was one of the American Film Institute's ten Movies of the Year for 2000; mother Nanita, a notable New York stage actress and Ford Agency model who also appeared in Movies of the Week, soaps, and commercials; and her father Peter, who as a child acted on the Broadway stage with Mary Martin and Helen Hayes and later starred in the television series The Aldridge Family, where he met Tippi Hedren, whom he married. (To avoid any confusion: Tippi is Melanie's mother and Nanita is Tracy's mom. There's no such thing as a "pre-stepmom," but that and friendship are the connections between Tracy and Tippi.)

Tracy's television roles include one reminiscent of Rita Hayworth's Gilda as Johnny Depp's girlfriend in 21 Jump Street, a starring role in Lifetime's Their Second Chance with Lindsay Wagner, and a role as Laura Dern's sister in Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy. Tracy was a series regular on the ABC drama The Monroes, in which she played the rebellious daughter of William Devane.

She has also appeared in two Movies of the Week: Circle of Deceit, where she co-starred with Janine Turner and Esai Morales and CBS's Murder in the Mirror, in which she played Jane Seymour's best friend. 

Tracy starred in two sitcom pilots: Prowler Girls, about a Thelma and Louise-type pair hitting the road in their Plymouth Prowler and Revolting, a period sitcom best described as lying somewhere between Cheers and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Tracy recently shot the pilot demo A Fork on the Road for the Food Network as an on-air chef & host.

Tracy recently graduated from the California Sushi Academy and is one of the first certified female sushi chefs in the world, no mean feat in a profession closed to women for centuries. Tracy was, until it closed, the featured sushi chef at Tsunami's restaurant in Beverly Hills.

She regularly performs at benefits to raise awareness and funds for her favorite causes, animal rights and endangered animal preservation, most often for her friend, Tippi Hedren, who operates Shambala, the well-known wild animal preserve.

Tracy's currently working on bringing several nascent projects to fruition, including an online sushi class, a cooking series for television, and a project based on her experiences as a female sushi chef.

Credit: tracygriffith.com