The only actor who enjoyed being manipulated by Alfred Hitchcock: “He wanted total control over me”
One of the things Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed the least about being a filmmaker was working with actors, which hardly sounds conducive to a mutually beneficial working environment.
The ‘Master of Suspense’ famously said that “actors should be treated like cattle” who only exist to satisfy the director’s wants, needs, and whims. Doubling down on his near-total dismissal of the performers who brought his characters to life, Hitchcock described the best kind of actor as the one “who can do nothing extremely well.”
With that in mind, working with method practitioners would never end in sunshine and roses, but he did it anyway. He couldn’t wrap his head around Montgomery Clift’s approach to 1953’s I Confess, and he ended up being drawn into a heated feud with Paul Newman when the Torn Curtain star started asking too many character and performance-driven questions for his liking.
In those instances, Hitchcock gritted his teeth and went with it, but he reserved an altogether different and decidedly less savoury approach to handling his female actors. The ‘Hitchcock blonde’ became a staple part of his cinematic style, and in order to get the best out of his leading ladies, the auteur regularly decided that being a bit of a prick was the best course of action.
The stranglehold he exerted over Tippi Hedren was so controlling and manipulative that her career never took off in the way many were predicting after The Birds, and that’s without mentioning his obsession with Grace Kelly, his infatuation with Ingrid Bergman, or the cruel pranks he’d play on Kim Novak, which included hanging a plucked chicken from her dressing room mirror to mock her insecurities.
However, one person who didn’t mind was Joan Fontaine. She was only cast three days before the start of principal photography on 1940’s Rebecca, and even though Hitchcock went out of his way to foster very real tensions between the ensemble cast, Fontaine gladly let herself be dominated by the filmmaker’s forceful personality.
“He wanted total control over me,” she explained, which saw Hitchcock intentionally keep her away from her co-stars to try and draw out a better performance. “He seemed to relish the cast not liking one another, actor for actor, by the end of the film.” Fontaine was happy to hand it over, and instead of having a miserable time making Rebecca, she had such a great one she actively pursued him for another collaboration.
Fontaine was under contract with David O Selznick when Hitchcock put Under Suspicion together the following year, but a hefty fee was paid so that he could use her in the film. It definitely helped that she’d written to the director essentially begging for a part – which she said she’d happily play for free – although it can’t be discounted that her willingness to embrace and indulge his controlling side played a part in convincing the ‘Master of Suspense’ that she was worth shelling out for.
