LOS ANGELES – Melanie Griffith wishes Antonio Banderas would "do more" to help her recovery.
The 54-year-old actress has been in rehab three times to be treated for her substance abuse problems, and while she insists her spouse - with whom she has 14-year-old daughter Stella - is supportive, she knows he finds her addictions hard to deal with.
Melanie - who has two children, Alexander, 26, and 21-year-old Dakota, from previous relationships - said: "I started on pain pills when I hurt my knee skiing and just kept taking them. The kids knew; Dakota and Stella called me on it. Antonio was in London at the time. I went away to rehab for three months; it took 10 days just to detox. We had two family weeks there, but we didn't follow through.
"Antonio was supportive to the extent that he can be, but if you're not an alcoholic or drug addict, and you find out that your wife is a bad one, it's hard to deal with. I wish he would go to a meeting with me or to Al-Anon, but it's very foreign to him. Addiction runs in my family but not in his
"I don't mean that against him. I would like him to do more, but it's a difficult thing to have happen in any family, and in that way he has been totally by my side. He really is the greatest guy."
But Antonio insists Melanie's problems - which include alcoholism - have always been addressed by the whole family and everyone pulls together to help her.
He said: "We did all the therapies together."
The couple believe it is important to be open and honest about their problems in order to avoid damaging their children.
Antonio told the new issue of AARP magazine: "We have had as many problems as anybody. We've never hidden it. We've been open about addictions, in the case of Melanie.
"The pretending is the worst, because kids are so smart. They can see through all of those things, and if you don't talk openly about problems, it creates a very dark place. The children carry that through the rest of their lives, to their marriages, to their kids."
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