In her new memoir, actress Tippi Hedren alleges that Alfred Hitchcock sexually assaulted her on the sets of some of their films. The star of The Birds and Marnie has spoken up about the director’s controlling behavior in the past, which was dramatized for the HBO film, The Girl. But in her book, Tippi, Hedren claims that Hitchcock’s obsession with her culminated in sexual assault.
The New York Post is reporting from excerpts of the book, which details Hitchcock’s alleged shift from starmaker to harasser—according to Hedren, he watched her every move, limited her contact with the other actors, and had her handwriting analyzed. The actress also writes of a brief struggle with Hitchcock in the back of a limo, where he asked her to “touch him” and tried to kiss her. Things got worse on the set of Marnie, as Hedren says the director installed a door that led directly from his office to her dressing room. On one occasion, Hedren says Hitchcock “put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became.”
Hedren says she didn’t initially go public with any accusations because “sexual harassment and stalking were terms that didn’t exist” back when she was working with Hitchcock.