Kim Novak

“I tried so hard with movies like Vertigo and Middle of the Night and others. I felt those would show me that it's only a matter of time before I'd find the right one to reach out and touch people.”

“The first time I was in his office was when they called me in to tell me they had changed my name. I had a feeling that if I'd gone along with the name they'd chosen, I'd never be seen again. I'd be swallowed up by that name, because it was a false name: Kit Marlowe.”

“And I went through a lot of detours and I took a lot of roads and things so yes, that's all there, but it's not meant to be shocking or telltale.”

“Well, I'm Czech, but Polish, Czech, no matter, it's my name.”

“We only did probably two, three takes on every scene we did, at the most.”

“I don't feel that I was a Hollywood-created star.”

“The work I did in Vertigo meant nothing if no one cared about the movie. Luckily, Vertigo had a revival and people had begun to recognize there was something special and it gained in reputation. But it just as well could have ended up rotting in film cans somewhere.”

“The script was always the most important thing to me and I loved the script. For one thing, I've always admired trees. I just worship them. Think what trees have witnessed, what history, such as living through the Civil War, yet they still survive.”

“If you're wanting glamorous or really beautiful or really sexy, well then, I wasn't really the one, but I could do all of that. You could just get really lost in that kind of image.”

“I think it will be helpful to people because I know the expectations that are put on you as a sex symbol, and how Marilyn Monroe suffered and so on, and I was able to get free of that.”

“It means nothing if the movie doesn't get out there.”

“I used Jimmy to give me what I needed to keep going and to know that I was on the right path with it. I thought I saw Jimmy's soul all the time we worked. He never covered his soul and I never covered mine. We saw into each other's souls, very definitely.”

“I already hated that gray suit and then having to go through putting on that wig with a false front - again made me feel so trapped inside this person who was desperately wanting to break out of it but she was so caught up in the web of deception that she couldn't.”

“So, Hitchcock wouldn't say anything about my work in the movie but, on the other hand, he wouldn't complain, either.”

“I always felt Jimmy was trapped in Hollywood. He felt it himself. He loved aviation so much and he wanted to be able to do more of that. He somehow just got stuck here.”

“I knew Rita Hayworth only enough to know that she was just a tender, sensitive, beautiful human being. A lovely person. Very gentle. She would never stand up for her rights.”

“Just touching that old tree was truly moving to me because when you touch these trees, you have such a sense of the passage of time, of history. It's like you're touching the essence, the very substance of life.”

“For every answer, I like to bring up a question. Maybe I'm related to Alfred Hitchcock or maybe I got to know him too well, but I think life should be that way.”

“I don't think you want to give all the answers, but I think every answer you do give should bring up another question, and not all questions should be answered.”

“As I said, I began losing confidence in my instincts, which is tough and very bad for an instinctive person.”