Tippi Hedren’s favourite Alfred Hitchcock movie: “All the memories of my life come flooding back”
Actor Tippi Hedren began her professional life as a model, but when she was discovered by Alfred Hitchcock, who saw her in a television commercial, her life was changed forever. Her first uncredited acting role arrived in 1950’s The Petty Girl, but it was her work for Hitchcock that would really set her on the way towards stardom.
More than ten years after The Petty Girl, Hedren signed up with Hitchcock, and the English director quickly set about putting her through the paces in screen tests of scenes from his 1950s movies. Quickly, the young actor became the filmmaker’s protegee and was asked to play the lead role in his next film, The Birds.
“I was so stunned,” Hedren once said of her first shot at the big time. “It never occurred to me that I would be given a leading role in a major motion picture. I had great big tears in my eyes.” After delivering a brilliant effort in the horror-thriller movie based on Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 short story of the same name, Hedren again agreed to take part in Hitchcock’s next venture.
1964’s Marnie saw Hedren star alongside Sean Connery in a psychological thriller. However, the film was the second and final time that the actor and director would work together, with Hedren claiming that Hitchcock had become too possessive over her. During an interview with Filmmaker magazine, Hedren explained how Hitchcock was mortified when she said she was going to star for someone else for her next role.
“Apparently, when Hitch heard that I was going to be working with Charlie [Chaplin] in the Countess of Hong Kong, he almost had a heart attack,” the actor said. Evidently, there was an intensity to the relationship between Hitchcock and Hedren that seemed to border on the problematic.
Hitchcock was clearly possessive over his new favourite actor, and even though their working relationship ended in tears, Hedren would always have a deep admiration for Hitchcock, the director, even if she would always be keen on Hitchcock, the man. In fact, Hedren was happy to call Hitchcock “one of the greats” and named her favourite movie of his that she didn’t star in.
“All the Hitchcock films are wonderful, going way back,” Hedren said in the Filmmaker interview. “I really like Rebecca because of the character. He had such an incredible capacity to frighten us, and how interesting that we all like to be scared.” Hitchcock would famously adapt du Maurier with The Birds, but he’s already done it with Rebecca back in 1940.
Rebecca was Hitchcock’s first American movie, and Laurence Olivier played an aristocratic widower named Maxim de Winter, while Joan Fontaine played the young woman who became Maxim’s second wife. The film’s title comes from Maxim’s first wife’s name, who seems to cast a spectral presence over the story’s characters and its gothic narrative.
Discussing how watching Hitchcock’s films made her feel when watching them in hindsight, Hedren noted, “All the memories of my life come flooding back, which is kind of glorious.” She went on to express a final thought about their relationship, saying, “I had no fear of him. I think he was more afraid of me. I walked away with my head high, but I had to walk away from the entire business.”
