Nearly 60 years after abandoning her Hollywood career, Kim Novak is about to step back into the spotlight. In fact, she’s about to do so quite a few times.
Novak, 92, most famous for her role in “Vertigo,” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterwork, will be awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement on Sept. 1 at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, running Wednesday to Sept. 6. A documentary about her life, “Kim Novak’s Vertigo,” will have its world premiere at the festival that same day.
She is also about to be portrayed by Sydney Sweeney in “Scandalous,” a new movie directed by Colman Domingo, about her interracial love affair with Sammy Davis Jr., played by David Jonsson.
The two films and upcoming award have prompted Novak to reminisce about her whirlwind Hollywood era. With virtually no acting training, she was signed to a contract at Columbia Pictures at age 21 and within a few years was one of cinema’s biggest stars. But Novak, who has devoted most of her adult life to being a visual artist — her first love — and rescuing animals, has no regrets about giving it all up.
“When I left Hollywood, it isn’t like I just wrapped up my life,” she said. “Suddenly I was free to express everything on canvas and not have to be the canvas.”
In a recent phone interview from her home in Oregon, she spoke candidly about her past and her present, and her choices.
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The post Kim Novak, 92, Finds a Defiant Life Has Its Own Rewards appeared first on New York Times.
