{"id":115354,"date":"2025-09-02T23:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T23:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/115354\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T23:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T23:29:07","slug":"kim-novaks-longtime-confidante-reveals-real-reason-she-left-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/115354\/","title":{"rendered":"Kim Novak\u2019s Longtime Confidante Reveals Real Reason She Left Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMuch has been made over the years about why Vertigo icon Kim Novak<\/a> did what many seemed unthinkable<\/a> when she fled Hollywood and said goodbye to an enviable and still thriving acting career that saw her collaborate with everyone from Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart to Billy Wilder and Frank Sinatra. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut her longtime manager and confidante, Sue Cameron, revealed a surprising new reason for Novak\u2019s departure while participating in a press conference at the Venice Film Festival, which hosted the world premiere Alexandre O. Philippe\u2019s new documentary Kim Novak\u2019s Vertigo. Cameron claimed it all came down to \u2026 sour pickles?<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time she started shooting Richard Quine\u2019s 1965 film The Notorious Landlady opposite Jack Lemmon and Fred Astaire, Novak had made up her mind that she hated Hollywood and was ready to leave, Cameron said. So when she and her sister went for a drive near picturesque Carmel, not far from where they were shooting the film, the siblings happened upon a gorgeous property.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[They] found this extraordinary house that Kim named \u2018Gull House,\u2019 which is all glass and rock right near Big Sur, right over the sea. She bought that house immediately on that day in the middle of shooting,\u201d explained Cameron, who executive produced the documentary. \u201cShe intended to use it for weekends whenever she was unhappy in Hollywood, so she always had an escape. In the back of her mind, she was planning the escape already, and that way she had a place to go to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer plans accelerated when a 1966 mudslide claimed her Bel-Air home.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe lived across the street from the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles, up on a hill, and the hill slid away. She said, \u2018Well, this is the sign.\u2019 Kim strongly believes in signs, and she said, \u2018Well, that\u2019s it. I\u2019m supposed to leave. My house is going, I\u2019m leaving.\u2019 She took the dogs, and she got in the car,\u201d Cameron explained during the Q&A session. \u201cKim loves pickles. This sounds crazy, but she loves certain pickles, like a certain sour pickle, and she drove to where she could always get the pickles, and they were out of the pickles. She said, \u2018That\u2019s it. That\u2019s a sign there are no more pickles. I\u2019m leaving. I\u2019m gone.\u2019 It was the pickle the last minute that made her say, \u2018I\u2019m not coming back.\u2019 And she didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNovak\u2019s decision to leave is also well documented in the festival selection, Kim Novak\u2019s Vertigo, from Swiss filmmaker Philippe, as are passions for animals, painting and her late equine veterinarian husband. The doc is being shown out of competition in Venice in conjunction with the festival presenting a lifetime achievement award to Novak, who received her prize on Monday from Guillermo del Toro<\/a> and festival director Alberto Barbera. In his tribute, del Toro noted Novak\u2019s decision to bid adieu to the business. \u201cRemarkably, she also chose to slow down, to take a break at the peak of her powers and to seek personal fulfillment raising horses and as a lyricist and a painter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn The Hollywood Reporter critic Leslie Felperin\u2019s review<\/a> of the doc, she writes that Philippe \u201cmay take writing, directing and co-producing credits here, and appears onscreen as Novak\u2019s interviewer, but it\u2019s Novak who feels like the one who\u2019s largely in charge.\u201d Cameron confirmed that Novak is always in the driver\u2019s seat in every aspect of her life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSpeaking of someone who has represented her for decades, she only gives you what she chooses to give you. She controls every single interview and decides if she\u2019s doing a phone or if she\u2019s doing a zoom, she\u2019ll look at the person, or she\u2019ll get a sound of the voice, and she\u2019ll decide how much she wants to give,\u201d she said of the actress, who talks in the documentary about her bipolar diagnosis and how that affected her decisions. \u201cThis is a woman who never gives up. She won\u2019t do anything unless she wants to do it. The surprise of the film is the revelations about her childhood. When you see the movie, you will understand what made her become the way she is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCameron concluded that the \u201cvery critical\u201d Novak adores Philippe\u2019s doc so much it brought her to tears.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe loves it. She loves every frame. She cried throughout. She called me after she saw it, and she was sobbing and sobbing, and she said, \u2018You did it, you did it.\u2019 It was a remarkable reaction. She\u2019s very critical, and she had nothing but wonderful things that. to say about it. It wasn\u2019t easy, really, to get her to do this. She wouldn\u2019t. I had to beg her to let him in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNovak\u2019s reaction caught Philippe off guard. \u201cI didn\u2019t quite expect the reaction. She sent me an email that, of course, made me cry, and then the next day she left me a two minute voice memo, which, you know, I will cherish for the rest of my life,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s beyond words truly, how what it means to have a voice note from Kim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGuillermo del Toro presents a Golden Lion to Novak. \u201cMost impressive is the fact that she was capable of projecting frailty, power, mystery,\u201d del Toro said. \u201cTo appear, endearing, dynamic, mythical and phenomenal. And with all those wonderful arresting performances, she always carried a little bit of warmth, a little bit of heartbreak and a little bit of mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Photo by Andreas Rentz\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much has been made over the years about why Vertigo icon Kim Novak did what many seemed unthinkable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75,17731,77,61877,54578],"class_list":{"0":"post-115354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-guillermo-del-toro","12":"tag-international","13":"tag-kim-novak","14":"tag-venice-2025"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}