HBO's The Girl: Was Alfred Hitchcock an 'evil' sexual deviant?

An upcoming HBO movie paints the director as abusive and vindictive towards his leading ladies, an account that Tippi Hedren — star of The Birds — corroborates

Tippi Hedren
(Image credit: Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP)

Tippi Hedren — one of "Hitchcock's Blondes," along with Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, and Grace Kelly — spoke at a panel last week about an upcoming HBO film titled The Girl, which chronicles Hedren's fraught working relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock. She didn't have nice things to say. Hedren, now 82, claims that when she worked with Hitchcock on The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), the director revealed a decidedly unsavory streak. Here, a concise guide to the auteur's purported on-set issues:

What are Hedren's accusations against Hitchcock?

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us

Frances is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, managing the website on the early morning shift and editing stories on everything from politics to entertainment to science and tech. She's a graduate of Yale and the University of Missouri journalism school, and has previously worked at TIME and Real Simple. You can follow her on Twitter and on Tumblr.