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She was the No 1 box office star in the late 50s, but for decades Kim Novak, the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo, has lived a life of quiet seclusion. Now, at the age of 92, the last of the great, glamorous movie stars of Hollywood’s golden era is back in the spotlight. She is being honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Venice film festival, where a documentary about her life and career, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, is premiering.

For Novak, it is a tribute not just to her acting but to her lifelong refusal to be controlled and manipulated by Hollywood, or anyone else.

“It’s incredible to feel appreciated and to receive this gift before the end of my life,” she says in her unmistakable husky voice when we meet on Zoom. “I think I’m being honoured as much for being authentic as for my acting. It has sort of come full circle.”

Novak’s haunting performance in Vertigo – as both Madeleine, an enigmatic society wife, and Judy, the ordinary shopgirl hired to impersonate her – is at the heart of what makes the film the greatest of all time. The fragile presence she brought to the parts was only possible because the story felt personal.

“I identified so much with Judy and Madeleine because they were both being told to change who they really were,” she recalls. “They had to become something that didn’t represent them.”

The actor’s devotion to preserving her identity can be traced back to her shy, introspective childhood and her early years in Hollywood.

Born Marilyn Novak in Chicago to a railway dispatcher and a factory worker (both Czech immigrants), she grew up in a rough neighbourhood where she endured bullying for being different. She found refuge in art, studying at the Chicago Art Institute and supporting herself with modelling jobs. It was during a trip to Los Angeles that she was spotted by Columbia Pictures, who signed her in 1954.

That’s when the transformation began. Harry Cohn, who infamously ruled the film production company with an iron fist, demanded that she change her name because there could be only one Marilyn in Hollywood, and “nobody’s gonna go see a girl with a Polack name” (she won a battle to keep her surname). He also shamed her into losing weight and had her teeth capped and her hair bleached.

“They hired you because they thought you have something special, and then the first thing they’d do is try to give you a new face,” Novak recalls. “They’d want the mouth of Joan Crawford, the hair of Jean Harlow. So by the time you left the makeup chair, it wasn’t even you any more. I needed to fight to keep my own sense of who I was.”

Novak is lively and energetic, with a remarkable memory and a ready sense of humour. It’s easy to understand why audiences were quickly mesmerised by her. Her breakthrough came with Picnic in 1955, which won her a Golden Globe, and she followed that with acclaimed roles opposite Frank Sinatra in The Man with the Golden Arm and Pal Joey – on which she performed My Funny Valentine.

When Vertigo came along in 1958, Novak was 25 and at the height of her fame. On set, she found a rare creative freedom. “The thing I absolutely adored about Hitchcock was he allowed you to become the character in the way you saw fit. More insecure directors want to think for you, act for you, and therefore you have nothing to offer.”

It also helped that her co-star, James Stewart, matched her emotional vulnerability, in an era when showy, theatrical performances were common. “Working with Jimmy was the greatest thing that could have happened to me. He was a reactor, not an actor, just like me. We bounced off each other.”

By contrast, she found other actors difficult. Kirk Douglas, for example, was “constantly using moves and looks … he’d say: ‘I’ll show you the rhythm of the scene.’ It threw me. It was unnatural,” she recalls.

Novak’s struggle to maintain her sense of self extended into her personal life, too. With Sinatra, work blurred into a romance that was heavily covered in the gossip pages. As was her clandestine love affair with Sammy Davis Jr, which ended after Cohn threatened Davis with mob violence, insisting it would be “bad for business” if Novak were involved with a Black man. Nearly 70 years later, a new film, Scandalous!, directed by Colman Domingo, will dramatise that relationship, with Sydney Sweeney playing Novak.

Novak does take issue with the title. “I don’t think the relationship was scandalous,” she says. “He’s somebody I really cared about. We had so much in common, including that need to be accepted for who we are and what we do, rather than how we look. But I’m concerned they’re going to make it all sexual reasons.”

Despite Cohn’s coerciveness, or because of it, Novak feels the Columbia boss played a crucial role in Hollywood dynamism at the time. After his death in 1958, she began receiving substandard scripts, which she describes as “painful and humiliating”.

She made a few more quality films, including Bell Book and Candle, and Strangers When We Meet, but by the mid-1960s she had grown weary of the industry’s relentless pressures. “I feared becoming ‘Kim Novak’. Every time I played a role, I took on part of it. I was beginning to lose myself and what I stood for.”

When her home in Big Sur was ravaged by fire and later destroyed in a mudslide, she took it as a sign that it was time to step away entirely. She relocated to Oregon, where she met and married Robert Malloy, an equine veterinarian, in 1976. “He was very authentic,” she says. “My mother said: ‘You should marry this man, he could ground you.’ And that was true.”

Away from the glare of cameras and gossip, Novak also finally returned to her first love: painting. It became a lifeline during bouts of depression (Novak was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the early 2000s) and after the death of Malloy in 2020.

“Art is the thing that saved me, I paint at least eight hours a day,” she says. “I miss Robert a lot. But living alone is satisfying for me. I learned from my mom that I had to be the captain of my own ship.”

She has also found solace in her animals. “They could tell me more about me than I could. Like my goat: if I would dare wear a scent, he’d take his horns out and want to bite me, because he felt that it wasn’t me.”

She has largely stayed out of the public eye, except for a rare appearance at the Oscars in 2014 when she presented two awards. But the experience was a painful reminder of why she had left Hollywood. For the event, Novak had fat injections in her cheeks, and the online reaction to her appearance was swift and cruel. Donald Trump joined the onslaught, tweeting that Novak should sue her cosmetic surgeon. (Coincidentally, the US president recently hailed Sweeney after it emerged she was a registered Republican).

Novak was devastated by the criticism, but instead of shrinking she spoke openly about bullying and mental health. How does she feel about all of that now?

“I’ve always had a strong feeling against bullies,” she says. “How I feel about the president has got nothing to do with what he said about me at the Academy Awards. I didn’t like what he said, and that’s when I spoke up about bullies. But since then he has become way more than just a bully. While I tolerated what he said and didn’t speak back to him on that, I will not tolerate what he’s telling me and everyone else to do.”

“Dictatorships are taking over the world, including in the US,” she adds. “Too many people are not standing up for their rights and for what matters in life, like truth and honour and decency. For our democracy and freedoms.

“I cannot tell you how strongly I feel about this. People are afraid to speak out, and I understand. But we’ve got to stand together and make ourselves heard.”

That instinct that drives Novak to speak out now was present in the ways she challenged the system at the height of her career – including creating her own production company and going on strike over a salary that was lower than that of her male co-stars. Announcing her award, the Venice film festival director Alberto Barbera called her “a rebel at the heart of Hollywood”.

Does she believe progress has been made for women in the industry today? “We make progress, but unfortunately then we always go back,” she says. “It inevitably always goes back to sex appeal. It still matters too much how we look. Social media and AI are able to show all kinds of stuff that isn’t real. They’re today’s bad directors, trying to remake women.”

In Alexandre O Philippe’s new documentary, Novak revisits the shadows of her past. If her life has been one long journey of self-discovery, I wonder if it’s safe to say she has finally found herself. “Yes,” she says firmly. “I’m proud that I held on to what’s important. Of course there are many things I wish I had done differently, but they’re little things God and everyone else can forgive me for.”

And how would she like to be remembered? She pauses. “I would like them to think that I was true to myself. That I kept my standards high and lived by them.”

Param Sundari has finally channeled its Pardesiya fever as audiences root for the film on day 2. In the last seven hours, the ticket sales for the film have jumped by almost 45% when compared to the same time frame on day 1. Even the morning and afternoon occupancies have witnessed jump!

Sidharth Malhotra & Janhvi Kapoor’s Charm Works!

Sidharth Malhotra and Janhvi Kapoor’s chemistry, seems to be working at the ticket window on day 2. While the romantic comedy managed to register a ticket sales of 115.58K on the opening day, it has already registered, almost 37% of this ticket sales on day 2 till 2 PM!

Param Sundari Box Office Day 2 Ticket Sales

On the second day, Saturday, August 30, Param Sundari managed to register a ticket sale of almost 43.5K on BMS from 7 AM to 2 PM. This is a jump of 45% from the previous day’s 30K ticket sales during the same time! Hopefully, the film will witness a surge in the evening and night shows!

Better Occupancy For The Rom-Com

On day 2, the romantic comedy helmed by Tushar Jalota managed to register better occupancy as well than the opening day. The film opened to an occupancy of 9.6% for the morning shows. It witnessed a jump of 87% for the afternoon shows and this occupancy in the theaters will rise by the night shows since tomorrow is Sunday!

Till 2 PM, Sidharth Malhotra and Janhvi Kapoor‘s film managed to almost 4 crore at the box office and it will witness a jump at the box office, earning more than the opening day on day 2 for sure.

Note: Box office numbers are based on estimates and various sources. Numbers have not been independently verified by Koimoi.

Check out the box office collection and latest verdicts of Hindi Films Of 2025.

Must Read: Hridayapoorvam VS Lokah Chapter 1 Chandra BMS Sales Day 2: With 157% Higher Sales, Naslen Surpasses Every Single Malayalam Film Of 2025 Except 1!

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The decision to call the new adaptation of the Warren Adler novel The War of the Roses simply The Roses is fitting. Where that novel, and its 1989 film adaptation starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, are about a divorce steeped in hatred, the new film, starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, is about a marriage that is loving underneath it all, even as it grows combative. And that change, while it perhaps makes the story more pleasing and human, saps it of its bite.

Here, Colman plays Ivy, a chef who meets Theo (Cumberbatch), an architect who wanders into the kitchen while she’s working. They have instant chemistry, and before you know it, they have relocated to the coast of California and are married with young twins. He is working to design a new museum, and she opens a seafood restaurant that struggles to attract customers. A stormy night shifts their fortunes, and resentments start to grow.

Most of the run of the film is spent with them arguing and then making up, often tearfully, in a way that calls to mind lots of other stories about affluent middle-aged couples trying to endure boredom in their marriages. It turns darker only close to the end, and even then, it runs on an engine of these people basically loving each other but getting carried away by their hurt feelings. Other than a brief montage of spiteful behavior (most of it shown in the trailer), they have mostly ordinary arguments until the finale.

There’s a tonal tentativeness to The Roses that is maybe not surprising, given that the promotional material refers to its being “from the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things.” And it’s true: Director Jay Roach is responsible for both Meet the Parents and the Austin Powers movies, while writer Tony McNamara wrote Poor Things and The Favourite. It’s not that different sensibilities can’t work together, but the problem with The Roses is that it doesn’t seem to believe in the bitterness it introduces late; it plays like a wacky comedy with an obligation to gesture at darkness.

The supporting cast is made up of sturdy comedy contributors: Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon as an American couple with whom the Roses are rather inexplicably friends, Zoë Chao and Jamie Demetriou as another couple they know through Theo’s work, and Allison Janney in a single scene as Ivy’s divorce lawyer. But other than Janney, The Roses doesn’t use these actors to its best advantage.

Samberg can do both high-energy and sad-sack comedy very well, but his character seems adrift, introduced in a scene involving his convenient obsession with (Chekhov’s) guns, but otherwise inessential. McKinnon is weird and horny in the way she is often weird and horny, and she’s so good at it, but the third or fourth time she plays basically the same scene in the same way, even this loses steam. Chao and Demetriou are funny but are asked to work incredibly broad, to the point where a scene that should be about simmering tension between Theo and Ivy is thrown off by their presence. Again, these are very talented performers who have been fantastic in other things, but Roach seems to understand broad comedy better than biting satire.

An important moment — very emotionally nihilistic, very go-for-broke moment — in the 1989 adaptation of The War of the Roses comes at the very end. (Caution: Here, you will be spoiled about something in that film that doesn’t happen in this one.) Oliver and Barbara Rose lie gravely injured in the ruins of the house they destroyed each other to keep. Oliver reaches over to Barbara, placing his hand on her, perhaps offering one final moment of reconciliation before they both die. Barbara reaches up, touches his hand … and then throws his hand away from her. Even close to death, she has the energy to reject him. It is brilliant and brutal, and not only does it not happen in this movie, but when you get to the end, you will know it could not happen in this movie, because nobody in this marriage could be that mean.

There’s nothing wrong with a basically pro-marriage comedy about how hard it is not to grow bored and resentful in a long relationship, and how things can get out of hand if you don’t take the time to appreciate each other and so forth. Colman and Cumberbatch are charming and funny, and from time to time one of them will uncork a really good line reading that’s worth a laugh.

But the moral of the original story was that nobody will ever truly and deeply despise you quite like somebody who used to love you, and it’s hard not to miss it. The way divorce turns the Roses vicious to their cores — vicious truly, vicious and meaning it — is not part of this telling. And as such, it raises the question that so many returns to existing intellectual property raise: Why? Why not just write a middle-aged married-people comedy as an original story, rather than tying it to an existing property whose essence it doesn’t share? No adaptation will ever be a carbon copy of a novel, of course, let alone a copy of a previous effort on film. But it can be faithful to a satire’s bite, particularly when that bite is the main appeal of the entire story.

The Roses isn’t bad, exactly. Why not watch a couple of charming actors play off each other, having a little fun, throwing some barbs? It’s fine. But the story of the Roses can be, and has been, a gloriously nasty, acidic little thing. And what you have here is a standard studio comedy, very affable and jokey, and that’s a little disappointing.

This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.

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Meghan Markle’s Netflix series With Love, Meghan might be firmly focused on lifestyle tips and everyday elegance, but for fans of the Duchess of Sussex’s signature style, it also serves as a built in fashion inspiration board. Over the course of the series’s second season, Meghan shows off her flair for understated pieces that bring casual sophistication, once again cementing her status as a button down shirt influencer, and bringing laid-back cool with classic staple tees.

One of those covetable looks was the black button down dress the duchess wore during the season’s fourth episode. Sleek and simple, the sleeveless, crewneck silhouette adds some visual interest in the form of delicate contrasting buttons running down the front. Think: a sleeveless shirtdress with a modern edge—a category that Meghan proved her mastery of throughout the season.

The all-black look is in keeping for Meghan’s go-to minimalist aesthetic; a fact that she touched on in the episode. “Existentially I am a neutral person,” she told guest Samin Nosrat in reference to her much talked-about preference for ensembles in tones of cream, black, and brown. (Meghan had previously caused a stir in the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan when she said that she “rarely wore color” in the UK so as not to distract from members of the royal family.) In episode seven, she adds, “I normally dress monochromatically, not because I think it’s the most stylish thing in the world, but because I think it’s really easy.”

As you might expect, the version worn by Meghan—the Bryony dress by Doen—is now out of stock, but here are similar styles you can add to your closet ASAP.

Maggy London Sleeveless Linen Blend Shirtdress

Now 40% Off

Tuckernuck Black Jagger Dress

Avec Les Filles Sleeveless Maxi Corduroy Dress

ANRABESS Women Casual Sleeveless Maxi Sundress

Brooks Brothers Sleeveless Shirt Dress

Lauren Hubbard is a freelance writer and Town & Country contributor who covers beauty, shopping, entertainment, travel, home decor, wine, and cocktails.