There aren’t many stars left from Hollywood’s golden age, so it’s always great to hear from an old star who is still alive and well — even if their days in the spotlight are long behind them.
Like Kim Novak, who celebrated her 90th birthday yesterday. Novak appeared in many memorable Hollywood films, but is perhaps best known for her starring role in the Alfred Hitchcock classic Vertigo. But over 50 years ago, she walked away from show biz for good.
Now, the actress has recently opened up for a rare interview. Read more about what she’s up to today, and why she left Hollywood behind.
Hollywood career
Novak, born February 13, 1933 in Chicago, began her Hollywood career in the 1950s. From the beginning, she refused to let Hollywood control her identity, including refusing to change her last name.
“I said, `I’m not going to change my family name,’” she told the Washington Post. “[Columbia Pictures chief] Harry Cohn said, `’Well, nobody’s going to go see a girl with a Polack name.’ I said, `Well, I’m Czech, but Polish, Czech, no matter, it’s my name.’”
Her breaking role was the 1955 film Picnic, a critical and commercial success that earned her the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer.
She co-starred with Frank Sinatra in the films The Man with the Golden Arm and Pal Joey, and by the end of the decade was one of Hollywood’s biggest box-office draws.
Today, Novak is best remembered for her starring role in the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo, opposite James Stewart. While the film received mixed reviews at the time, it has gone on to be widely regarded as one of the best films ever made.
But only a few years after being one of Hollywood’s biggest draws, Novak walked away from Hollywood and became semi-retired from acting.
“I lost a sense of who I truly was and what I stood for,” Novak told People in 2021. “I fought all the time back in Hollywood to keep my identity so you do whatever you have to do to hold on to who you are and what you stand for.”
“I had to leave to survive. It was a survival issue.”
Post-retirement
While Novak has acted sporadically in the decades since — she had a recurring role on the ’80s soap Falcon Crest — she has mostly lived a very private life, preferring to paint at home.
But as her work and career have been positively reevaluated over the years, particularly Vertigo, she has given more interviews and made more press appearances, and has opened up about her personal life.
After being honored at the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2012, she revealed she had bipolar disorder. “I was not diagnosed until much later. I go through more of the depression than the mania part… I don’t think I was ever cut out to have a Hollywood life.”
In 2014, she made a rare appearance at the Academy Awards: “I’ve got to take a minute just to say I’m really glad to be here. It’s been a long time,” she said on stage.
90th birthday
Yesterday, the iconic actress celebrated her milestone 90th birthday, and opened up to People Magazine about her life and legacy. She said she’s grateful her performances have become more appreciated as the years have gone by.
“What’s wonderful is sometimes movies get less appreciated later and people get less appreciated,” she told People. “But with me, it’s worked the opposite. I’m so grateful because I’ve become more respected as an actress. I think my style of acting is understood now, where it wasn’t then, because at that time in the ’50s, I think there was some overacting, making it too broad — too obvious.”
“I just was expressing myself as I always do, honestly and truthfully. I think that the style is more appreciated, and so my life has grown richer the longer I’ve been around on this earth.”
She also hopes that her work with paintings will be part of her legacy as well, hoping that she is “going to live on through my art.”
“I feel I’ve been meant to stay around, because with my art, I expressed so much, and when I’m gone it’s going to be fascinating for people to look at my art and figure out what I was saying about my experiences in Hollywood, in my childhood and all of my life,” she told People.
Novak also said she had found a kindred spirit in Pamela Anderson, relating to the Baywatch star after seeing her recent Netflix documentary series Pamela: A Love Story.
“They may see you as a sex symbol, but that’s not how you see yourself, and that’s what was beautiful about Pamela’s documentary,” Novak said. “She was showing us the person she was growing up and who she was through these relationships, not of how it looked to other people, but from the perspective of how it felt to her.”
Relationship with Sammy Davis Jr.
Novak also said she’s ready to open up about one of the most scandalous parts of her career: her relationship with entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.
Novak and Davis began a relationship in 1957, when interracial relationships were still taboo and illegal in most states. The two were introduced by actor Tony Curtis after the two laid eyes on each other at the Chez Paree.
“I said, ‘I’m going to have a party at my house. Come on by, and I’ll invite Kim,’” Curtis told Vanity Fair in 1999. “They both came over and they spent the evening together—deep in thought, deep in talk. I could see right from the beginning that they were getting along in an intense way, and that was the beginning of the relationship.”
They two fell in love, but once the relationship hit the tabloids, Columbia studio head Harry Cohn forced them to end it through intimidation.
“[Cohn was] surrounded by all these men, including people in the Mob. He told me that my career was in jeopardy if I continued to see Sammy… it was very disturbing, but we knew there was no use fighting it,” Novak later confirmed.
Decades later, Novak said she’s ready to clear the air about this whirlwind, forbidden romance, saying she opened up in an upcoming documentary Kim Novak: The Golden Age Rebel.
“I told them a lot of revealing things,” she told People. “I was very open. I told them about my life in Hollywood, I also told them about the real story of Sammy and me. That was often misunderstood. I just wanted to be totally open about everything that had been more secretive in the past.”
Happy 90th birthday to Kim Novak! She may have walked away from Hollywood decades ago, but thanks to films like Vertigo she’s still remembered as one of the great classic film actresses.