In her revealing new memoir, Tippi, screen icon Tippi Hedren claims the director Alfred Hitchcock sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions while she worked on the classic films “The Birds” and “Marnie.”
Hedren, now 86, writes that before she even started filming 1963's “The Birds,” Hitchcock told her castmates not to speak with or “touch the girl.” In excerpts obtained by The New York Post, Hedren claims the director became “icy” and “petulant” if he saw her talking or laughing with other men.
Hedren also alleges Hitchcock tried to force himself on top of her and kiss her in the back of a limo.
“It was an awful, awful moment,” she writes, per the Post, adding that she never told anyone about the incidents because “sexual harassment and stalking were terms that didn't exist” at the time.
Following “The Birds,” Hedren worked on another movie with Hitchcock ― 1964's “Marnie” ― and she claims things escalated to the point where Hitchcock was essentially stalking her. She writes that the director had a secret door installed between his office and her dressing room. She also claims he kept a lifelike mask of her face for his own use.
According to the excerpts, Hitchcock once entered her dressing room and “put his hands on” Hedren, but “the harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became,” she writes, per the Post.
Hedren's experiences on Hitchcock's sets inspired the 2012 HBO film “The Girl,” but the actress has never gone into this much detail about the alleged assaults. She has, however, spoken about the director in multiple interviews over the years. In a 2012 interview with The New York Times, the actress called Hitchcock a “misogynist” and said he had “a whole lot of problems,” while in a profile published by The Telegraph, she said he put her in a “mental prison.”
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