Tippi Hedren accuses Hitchcock of sexual
harassment in memoir
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[November 01, 2016]
By Piya Sinha-Roy
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Tippi
Hedren graphically chronicles in a new memoir incidents in which she
says she was sexually assaulted and harassed by famed British director
Alfred Hitchcock during her star turns in "The Birds" and "Marnie."
"Tippi," which goes on sale on Tuesday, documents Hedren's rise from
fashion model to movie star and "Hitchcock blonde" after the director
spotted her in a commercial and cast her in the lead of the 1963
thriller "The Birds."
The book by Hedren, mother of actress Melanie Griffith and grandmother
to "Fifty Shades of Grey" star Dakota Johnson, offers a rare,
first-person account of the rotund "master of suspense" that contrasts
sharply with Hitchcock's public image as a mild-mannered, self-effacing
English gentleman.
What emerges is the unflattering portrait of a powerful director who
nursed a dark, uncontrollable obsession with the icy-blonde leading
ladies of his films.
Hitchcock died in 1980 at age 80. A representative for his estate did
not immediately return requests for comment.
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Hedren, 86, recalled Hitchcock making unwanted advances during her
grueling six-month shoot for "The Birds" in 1962, including one
encounter while riding back to her hotel with the filmmaker in his
limousine.
"With no warning, he threw himself on top of me and tried to kiss me,"
she wrote. The actress said she pushed the director away and left the
vehicle.
The breaking point, she wrote, came in 1964 during production of
Hedren's second Hitchcock film, "Marnie," when the director "suddenly
grabbed me and put his hands on me."
"It was sexual, it was perverse, and it was ugly, and I couldn't have
been more shocked and more repulsed," she added, alleging that Hitchcock
threatened to ruin her career when she insisted on ending her contract,
which she did that day.
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![](../images/110116pics/news_J13.jpg)
Actress Tippi Hedren poses at the 2014 Princess Grace Awards gala at
the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California October 8,
2014. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo
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"It was the early 1960s. Sexual harassment and stalking were terms
that didn't exist back then," she wrote.
"Besides, he was Alfred Hitchcock, one of Universal's superstars,
and I was just a lucky little blonde model he'd rescued from
relatively obscurity. Which one of us was more valuable to the
studio, him or me?"
"The Birds," about a California town terrorized by a vicious flock
of birds, is often named among the best horror films in American
cinema.
Hedren's experiences with Hitchcock were dramatized in HBO's 2012
film "The Girl," and stars actress Sienna Miller as a young Hedren
being coached, manipulated and tormented by Hitchcock.
The film features the limousine incident and sees Hedren terminate
her contract with Hitchcock when he demands she be "sexually
available" to him at all times.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Steve Gorman and Peter
Cooney)
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