Hollywood legend Tippi Hedren still loves big cats as much as she ever did, according to her granddaughter Dakota Johnson.

Fox News reported that Hedren, the 90 year-old icon who starred in such films as Marnie and The Birds, has been known for years for housing dozens upon dozens of felines at her animal sanctuary in California. This week, her actress granddaughter Johnson told “The Graham Norton Show” that the star still lives with her beloved big cats.

“She has 13 or 14 lions and tigers. There used to be like 60 cats and now there’s just a couple,” Johnson said.

Norton proceeded to show some photos of Hedren and her animals, including one showing a huge tiger jumping through her kitchen window right next to her. Another image showed Hedren’s daughter and Johnson’s mother, Melanie Griffith,  almost being bitten by a lion as she jumped in the pool.

“Classic,” Johnson said as she looked on. “She didn’t lose the leg!”

Johnson explained that by the time she was born, Hedren’s big animals were “all in huge compounds,” which made visits to her home “a lot safer.”

“It wasn’t as psycho as it was when they first started,” she said.

Hedren first worked with big cats in the 1981 movie Roar, and she explained in 2017 how she came to be such a big cat lover.

“When we wanted to use Hollywood acting animals to do the movie, [the trainers] would say, ‘I’m not going to let my big cat work with another cat. Get your own animals to do the film!’ So that’s how that happened,” Hedren said. “And we found there were so many lions and tigers being bred to be sold as pets — which is an unconscionable act, these are apex predators. For anyone to sell a baby lion or tiger to some family to become its pet is … it’s one of the most dangerous things that could ever have happened. Everything just grew from that.”

Once Hedren learned about the illegal sale of tigers and lions, she managed to get a bill passed on it in 2003.

“It took a long time before we started seeing results of the bill, but it’s still working,” she said. “I’m thrilled about it because these animals are not pets.”

Hedren has spent years living on the Shambala Preserve, an animal sanctuary she founded in Acton, California. The sanctuary is home to many endangered exotic cats including African lions, Siberian tigers, bobcats and more.

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

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