Quiz

In the mid-1990s, Crider committed to a weekly volunteer program where she served as a "special friend" in orphanages Hollygrove (Hollywood, CA) and Five Acres (Altadena, CA) to two children who were taken in by the state off the streets in the greater Los Angeles area.

Was engaged to actor James Woods in May 1997 while attending the Cannes Film Festival in France. After a lengthy courtship, the on and off couple were engaged to be married again on New Year's Eve 2000 at the San Ysidro Ranch in northern California. They met when seated next to each other on the airplane that would take them to Vancouver, B.C., Canada in early 1994 when she was to play his daughter in the TV movie Jane's House (1994). Crider never married Woods.

In the fall of 2009 Melissa Crider began pursuing a college degree in Psychology with other concentrations in Philosophy and Physics. She maintained a 4.00 GPA since her college commencement and was noted on The Dean's & President's Lists for six consecutive semesters at a community college until transferring 60 completed credits to a B.A. program. (febbraio 2012)

Graduated from high school with a 3.98 GPA in 1992 while serving as her senior high honors Beta Club President at Eureka Springs High School from 1991-1992.

Appeared in the second season premiere of CSI - Scena del crimine (2000). "CSI" star William Petersen played her father in the mini series Abissi di paura (1996).

Writes novels, screenplays, short stories, and children's books. In the winter of 2010, her poetry, An All-the-Rage City Dumpster, was published in actor/director/painter Jeffrey Vincent Parise's collection of works entitled, A Decade of Paintings: 2000-2010.

Is Godmother to three children: her brother Chris' son Levi, her friend Julie's son, Diamond, and her friend Elisabeth's daughter, Melissa Lucia Zipf, who was named after Missy. Little Melissa Zipf resides on an island off the coast of Spain near Dakar, Africa.

In the fall of 2010, the Norman Mailer Writers Colony and the National Council of Teachers of English awarded Crider a Norman Mailer Award as a finalist in the nonfiction category of a national essay-writing competition for American community colleges. Initially, Crider had written the essay, P.O. Box 549, for her college English professor, Jennifer Ford. It depicted a mystical occurrence regarding having mailed her deceased Granny Ella a birthday card to an old post office box number in Louisiana one November, only to receive a card and photograph of her in return three months later. Ella Buller Mitchell was raised in Elton, Louisiana and figures prominently in Crider's life. Growing up on a Louisiana cotton farm, she raised three children as a single woman in the 1930s/40s after having been widowed when Crider's mother, Linda, was two years of age. Ella was an avid supporter of the arts and remains to be an important female role model in Crider's life.

Voted "Best All-Around" by her high school senior class in 1992. Homecoming Queen 1990. Eureka Springs Folk Festival Queen 1990. Prom Queen 1991. Crider won Homecoming Queen again in 1992 the year of her graduation from Eureka Springs High School.

Started her career in New York City while staying on Roosevelt Island during summers when attending high school in Northwest Arkansas.