Kim Novak, Guest of Honour at the 66th Festival de Cannes

To mark the restoration of one of the masterpieces of world cinema, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the Festival de Cannes has invited its heroine, Kim Novak, to grace the event with her presence.

Novak will attend the screening of Vertigo, filmed in 1958, which will be shown in its restored form as part of Cannes Classics.

She will also take part in the closing ceremony for the 66th Festival de Cannes where she will award one of the Prizes on Sunday 26 May 2013.

Novak first attended the Festival in 1959 for the presentation of Middle of the Night by Delbert Mann (Palme d’or 1955 for Marty).

Her most memorable roles included the prostitute with a big heart in Kiss Me, Stupid by Billy Wilder, the witch in Richard Quine’s Bell Book and Candle and the adulteress in another Quine film, Strangers When We Meet. But Kim Novak’s greatest performance was surely as the disturbing heroine of Vertigo, 1958 – Hitchock’s finest film, which he described as “a love story with a strange atmosphere.”

Of her role, Kim Novak said, “What was interesting was that the scene reflected what I was going through at the time: it was the story of a woman who was forced to be someone she wasn’t.” Unwilling to accept the iron rule of the studios, she left Hollywood prematurely in order to devote herself to painting.