Prot-a-gonist * Not all Questions should be Answered

Kim Novak

acting

“I loved acting, which was never about money, the fame. It was about a search for meaning. It was painful.”

“If you’re wanting glamorous or really beautiful or really sexy, well then, I wasn’t really the one, but I could do all of that. You could just get really lost in that kind of image.”

“The first time I was in his office was when they called me in to tell me they had changed my name. I had a feeling that if I’d gone along with the name they’d chosen, I’d never be seen again. I’d be swallowed up by that name, because it was a false name: Kit Marlowe.”

“Well, I’m Czech, but Polish, Czech, no matter, it’s my name, Novak.”

“I already hated that gray suit and then having to go through putting on that wig with a false front – again made me feel so trapped inside this person who was desperately wanting to break out of it but she was so caught up in the web of deception that she couldn’t.”

“I tried so hard with movies like Vertigo and Middle of the Night and others. I felt those would show me that it’s only a matter of time before I’d find the right one to reach out and touch people.”

“The script was always the most important thing to me and I loved the script. For one thing, I’ve always admired trees. I just worship them. Think what trees have witnessed, what history, such as living through the Civil War, yet they still survive.”

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Alfred Hitchcock directs Kim Novak, Vertigo, 1958

Alfred Hitchcock

“For every answer, I like to bring up a question. Maybe I’m related to Alfred Hitchcock or maybe I got to know him too well, but I think life should be that way.”

“So, Hitchcock wouldn’t say anything about my work in the movie but, on the other hand, he wouldn’t complain, either.”

“The work I did in Vertigo meant nothing if no one cared about the movie. Luckily, Vertigo had a revival and people had begun to recognize there was something special and it gained in reputation. But it just as well could have ended up rotting in film cans somewhere.”

“We only did probably two, three takes on every scene we did, at the most.”

“The thing I loved about Alfred Hitchcock is that he left a lot of open ends there, a lot of clues that didn’t really add up the way you think they would, and sometimes, not at all.”

James Stewart, Kim Novak, Vertigo, 1958

security

“I didn’t want to start relying on what someone else thought was right. It was easier to go away all together. Harry Cohn did not make me. But I also feel that I probably didn’t make me, either. I think it was a combination. I think that’s what made it work.”

“I knew Rita Hayworth only enough to know that she was just a tender, sensitive, beautiful human being. A lovely person. Very gentle. She would never stand up for her rights.”

“I always felt Jimmy [Stewart] was trapped in Hollywood. He felt it himself. He loved aviation so much and he wanted to be able to do more of that. He somehow just got stuck here.”

“I used Jimmy to give me what I needed to keep going and to know that I was on the right path with it. I thought I saw Jimmy’s soul all the time we worked. He never covered his soul and I never covered mine. We saw into each other’s souls, very definitely.”

“I think it will be helpful to people because I know the expectations that are put on you as a sex symbol, and how Marilyn Monroe suffered and so on, and I was able to get free of that.”

“My security comes from my senses, my sensing the direction I should go and suddenly I felt out of tune, out of step with what other people wanted or what other people expected of me.
As I said, I began losing confidence in my instincts, which is tough and very bad for an instinctive person.”

Kim Novak

life

“Just touching that old tree was truly moving to me because when you touch these trees, you have such a sense of the passage of time, of history. It’s like you’re touching the essence, the very substance of life.”

“I don’t think you want to give all the answers, but I think every answer you do give should bring up another question, and not all questions should be answered.”

“If you want to live on the edge of life, you need to be flexible.”

“I live way out in the country, so there’s not a lot of people around to remind me. And my friends don’t think of me as ‘Kim Novak’ anymore anyway. It’s like they forgot, too. And so it’s nice.

“I love San Francisco. It would be a perfect place for a honeymoon.”

Kim Novak, 1933-