By Michaela Gordoni
PICNIC star Kim Novak reflected on her 1966 Hollywood departure in her documentary, KIM NOVAK’S VERTIGO.
“It’s not easy getting old,” Novak said in the documentary. “I’m feeling it’s close to the end.”
Novak was a very talented actress who chose to leave Hollywood at the height of her acting career.
“When I left, I was at the top of my game,” she said. But “Hollywood swallowed people whole,” Novak explained.
She referenced Marilyn Monroe’s death, which was ruled a suicide.
“I didn’t want that to happen to me,” the VERTIGO actress noted.
She moved to Big Sur when her home in Bel Air was destroyed in a mudslide.
“My survival mode was to paint,” Novak said.
Her first morning in Big Sur, she woke up feeling “liberated.”
“Totally liberated,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘Wow, I’m going to live my dream and not for someone else.’ It was wonderful. My cat was purring, the birds were singing, the waves were crashing — we were all just content.”
@witnify Hitchcock’s class film Vertigo was released #otd 1958. Actress Kim Novak on working with Hitchcock. #Vertigo #Hitchcock #UniversalPictures #witnify
“The first thing I did when I woke up was to get all my art equipment, set up my easel and look out the window,” Novak added. “I thought to myself, ‘This is paradise.’ Hollywood offers money and prestige, but nothing ever compares to that feeling I felt that morning.”
Novak has been an artist ever since. She creates whimsical paintings with swirling pastel themes. She had an exhibition at the Butler Art Museum last year.
Novak’s manager, Sue Cameron, said the documentary is all about Kim as a person, not her Hollywood days.
“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.”
Novak, who was born during The Great Depression, also revealed that her mother tried to kill her twice as an infant, The Daily Mail reported.
“She tried to abort me with knitting needles and it failed. So she tried to suffocate me with a pillow,” she said.
“I remember fighting to stay alive. I won, I stayed alive, and made it through,” she said.
Novak’s full story is told in KIM NOVAK’S VERTIGO, which released on Sept. 1
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