Dakota Johnson recalls mom Melanie Griffith got ‘horrific’ gift from ‘tyrant’ Hitchcock

Dakota Johnson’s mom Melanie Griffith was in for a scare of a lifetime when she was gifted a macabre present from iconic director Alfred Hitchcock.

Griffith’s mom, Tippi Hedren, famously starred in his 1960s films “Marnie” and “The Birds.”

The “Fifty Shades of Grey” alum, 32, noted in a recent Vanity Fair profile that Hitchcock gave Griffith, now 64, a mini Hedren stuck in a small coffin as a toy for Christmas.

“What happened with my grandmother was horrific because Hitchcock was a tyrant,” Johnson said. “He was talented and prolific — and important in terms of art — but power can poison people.”

She noted that the traumatizing gift was “alarming and dark and really, really sad for that little girl” and “really scary.”

The “21 Jump Street” actress then looked back on the 2012 HBO drama, “The Girl,” which fictionalized the contentious relationship between the “Psycho” filmmaker and Hedren, 92, during filming of “The Birds.”

Johnson and her grandmother saw a private screening of the movie with the rest of their family.

“We sat at HBO, my family, and watched that movie together,” she said.

Johnson continued, “It was one of those moments where you’re just like, ‘How could you not have warned us?’ We’re in a room with some execs. Maybe this warranted a little conversation beforehand? You look over and you see a woman who’s just been reminded of everything she went through, and it was heartbreaking. She was an amazing actress and he stopped her from having a career.”

Hedren has previously discussed the tumultuous partnership she had with Hitchcock in the decades following their movies.

She penned in her 2016 memoir, “Tippi,” that the British auteur made her life a living hell after she refused his romantic pursuits. She even alleged that he sexually assaulted her and ruined her acting career.