Tippi Hedren shot to fame as one of Alfred Hitchcock's iconic blondes with her role in The Birds. But behind the scenes, the actress said the director became obsessed with her, and that obsession turned into stalking and even sexual assault.
The New York Post reports that Hedren, now 86, details the abuse in her new memoir, Tippi. Hitchcock had seen her in a commercial and quickly signed her to a five-year contract. Before The Birds started filming, though, she started to become alarmed by his behavior. Every time she talked to a man on set, Hitchcock would give her an "icy" stare, even from across the room. He warned her costars to not talk to or touch "The Girl."
According to her memoir, Hitchcock once jumped on top of her and tried to kiss her while the two were in his limousine. And he had installed a hidden door that connected her dressing room to his office. One day, he got into her dressing room, Hedren wrote, and "put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became." Famously, he had real birds attack her during the climactic scene instead of mechanical ones, and that went on for five days until she "snapped" and had to go on medical leave for a week. She now thinks that this was Hitchcock's punishment for rejecting his advances.
The Daily Mail also points out that she felt similar backlash when filming Hitchcock's Marnie. In the film, her character is trapped into marriage and is raped on her wedding night. Apparently, Tippi wrote, "a man taking his frigid, unattainable bride by force was Hitchcock's fantasy about me." Later, he made moves to hurt her career, Hedren says, by blocking the studio's attempt to submit her for an Oscar, and stopping her for taking roles until her contract with him ran out.
Hedren says she didn't speak up at the time because "sexual harassment and stalking were terms that didn't exist" at the time. "I've made it my mission ever since to see to it that while Hitchcock may have ruined my career, I never gave him the power to ruin my life," she wrote.
This is not the first time Hedren has spoken out about her experience with Hitchcock, however. Their tumultuous relationship on and off the sets of The Birds and Marnie was the basis for the 2012 HBO film, The Girl, which starred Sienna Miller at Hedren and Toby Jones as Hitchcock.
