Kim Novak emerges to celebrate her 90th birthday and talk about Pamela Anderson

In celebration of her 90th birthday, Novak sat down for a rare interview for People, taking a reprieve from horseback riding and painting. While she says she has not watched a lot of new movies, one notable recent watch is Pamela: A Love Story.

“When you’re inside of the person who someone is looking at, you’re not looking from their perspective,” Novak says. “They may see you as a sex symbol, but that’s not how you see yourself, and that’s what was beautiful about Pamela’s documentary. She was showing us the person she was growing up and who she was through these relationships, not of how it looked to other people, but from the perspective of how it felt to her.”

Novak is no stranger to the pressures of maintaining a sexualized image for a career in Hollywood. Upon her entry into the industry at the age of 20, Novak was used by studio executives to rival other on-screen bombshells of the time, such as Marilyn Monroe. Touted as the Lavender Blonde, she would eventually become a powerful box office lure, starring in Vertigo, Picnic, Pal Joey, as well as Bell, Book And Candle.

“I mean, in so many of my performances, I think they were expecting to see the sex symbol, and instead I gave them just the raw me,” she says of her career.

Novak would retire from acting in 1991, living a life of seclusion and fostering other artistic endeavors. In 2015, she shared some insight into her decision to leave Hollywood for good.

“I kept feeling like I was going deeper and deeper, lost in almost like a quicksand, where it’s swallowing you up, your own personality, and I’d started to wonder who I am,” she told People. “I realized needed to save myself.”

Like Anderson, Novak also has a documentary on her life on the way, titled Kim Novak: Hollywood’s Golden Age Rebel.

“I told them a lot of revealing things,” she says of Jessica Menendez’s forthcoming film. “I was very open. I told them about my life in Hollywood, I also told them about the real story of Sammy [Davis Jr.] and me. That was often misunderstood. I just wanted to be totally open about everything that had been more secretive in the past. While you’re still alive, to be able to be questioned and answer truthfully, to clear up all kinds of mistaken views and all, it’s catharsis.”

When it comes to her big plans for her 90th birthday, Novak says, “I’ll go riding with my horse, Poet. Poet is my love and I will have my three dogs beside us, and it’ll be perfect.”