The legendary Hollywood star Kim Novak of Vertigo and Picnic fame is speaking out this week to admit that she is “close to the end” of her life at 92 years of age.
‘It’s Not Easy Getting Old…’
Novak was the number one box office star of the late 1950s. Just a few years later, however, Novak made the decision to leave Hollywood behind forever in favor of a simpler life in Oregon.
Novak’s story is being told in the new documentary Kim Novak’s Vertigo, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Monday. That same day, Novak was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
“It’s not easy getting old,” Novak said in an excerpt of the documentary obtained by People Magazine. “I’m feeling it’s close to the end.”
“I’ve been feeling the need to free something….” she continued before unburdening herself of her own past.
The documentary intertwines Novak’s story with that of her most famous movie Vertigo, which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
“It’s my story too…. They want to make you over,” she explained.
“They” were the Hollywood studio heads who shamelessly tried to make Novak and her fellow starlets into people they could control. Novak, however, fought back. Indeed, she famously battled Columbia Pictures President Harry Cohn, refusing to let him change her name to Kit Marlowe. He also forbade her from continuing the affair that she was having with Sammy Davis Jr.
“Every part of my life was controlled,” Novak recalled. “He called me ‘the fat Pollack.’”
Though Novak was born in Chicago, she is of Czech descent.
‘I Never Felt I Was A Movie Star…’
Though she was one of the most legendary actresses of her time, Novak admitted, “I never felt I was a movie star.”
In Vertigo, Novak was given a role that allowed her to explore her duality. She had no idea at the time just how much she related to the part. It was only later in life that Novak was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This allowed her to find even more parallels between her own life and that of her Vertigo character.
“I always resented being made over,” she said as she watched the 1958 film again for the documentary. “That was why I was so right for the role.”
Novak fled Hollywood in 1966 after a flood destroyed almost everything she owned.
“When I left I was at the top of my game,” she recounted.
“Hollywood swallowed people whole,” she explained, referring partly to her friend Marilyn Monroe, who died in 1962.
“I didn’t want that to happen to me,” she said quietly of Monroe’s fate.
Novak moved to Carmel, California at first, where she lived a quiet life painting. She then moved to Oregon, where she lives to this day. There, she has spent decades riding horses.
“My survival mode was to paint,’” she stated. “I don’t have to be the pretty one now.”
‘The Last Living Golden Goddess Of Film’
Kim Novak’s Vertigo was executive produced by Sue Cameron, Novak’s manager and close friend.
“I think it really represents who Kim is,” Cameron said of the documentary. “Nobody knows who she really is, nobody knows what she went through, the disasters in her childhood.”
“This is not a Hollywood-y documentary of famous names, this is about Kim, the person,” Cameron continued. “She turned down a million dollars to write her autobiography 25 years ago. Because they wanted all the Hollywood dirt, and she says, ‘No, that’s not who I am, I won’t do it.’”
Cameron went on to say that it’s important to tell Novak’s story now because she’s one of the last living actresses of her generation.
“She’s the last living golden goddess of film,” Cameron said. “And what’s more important is in this documentary, we show her as the true fighter she was for women, even way back in the ’50s, when they tried to force her to wear certain makeup, and she would go wipe it off. She was the very first woman to have her own production company.”
At the end of the documentary, Novak thanks the film’s director Alexandre Philippe for letting her tell her story.
“I needed to free myself from all of these ghosts…. I mean Hollywood ghosts,” she says. “You’ve given me permission. You’ve given me an appreciation of myself.”
Kim Novak is a true legend, and there will never be another one like her. We can’t wait to learn more about her story when Kim Novak’s Vertigo finally premieres for the public!