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Kim Novak reflected on aging and her decision to turn her back on Hollywood in an attempt to reclaim her story.
“It’s not easy getting old,” Novak, 92, said in the upcoming documentary “Kim Novak’s Vertigo,” according to People magazine. “I’m feeling it’s close to the end.”
“I’ve been feeling the need to free something….” the beginning of the film began.
Novak famously chose to leave Hollywood at what many considered would have been the peak of her career. “When I left, I was at the top of my game,” she said in the documentary about her exit from the industry in 1966.
KIM NOVAK EXPLAINS WHY SHE LEFT HOLLYWOOD: ‘I FELT LIKE I WAS LOSING MYSELF’
Kim Novak receives the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award during the Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 1. (Daniele Venturelli/WireImage)
“Hollywood swallowed people whole,” Novak said, referencing Marilyn Monroe’s death. The actress died at 36 and her death was ruled a possible suicide by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. “I didn’t want that to happen to me,” Novak noted.
The “Picnic” star turned her back on Hollywood after her Bel Air home was destroyed in a mudslide. She chose a cliff dwelling in Big Sur to become her place to start over, where she focused on other artistic skills.
“My survival mode was to paint,” Novak said.
Kim Novak gained fame in the early 1950s. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
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Novak opened up about how she felt waking up on her first morning after leaving Hollywood in a 2021 interview with Fox News Digital.
“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.”
“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.”
Kim Novak left her Hollywood career behind in 1966. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
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Kim Novak focused on painting after choosing to leave Hollywood. (Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Years later, Novak’s true story will be told in “Kim Novak’s Vertigo.”
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“This is not a Hollywood-y documentary of famous names, this is about Kim, the person,” Novak’s manager, Sue Cameron, said. “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.’”
“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.”