Hollywood icon Kim Novak is voicing a major concern about her forthcoming biopic starring Sydney Sweeney.
The film, titled Scandalous, will revisit the 92-year-old actress’ 50s-era romance with fellow entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.
Kim recently spoke to The Guardian, expressing her qualms about the salacious buzz surrounding the movie.
In particular, the former silver screen siren is not a fan of the film’s title and doesn’t feel it appropriately encompasses that stage of her life.
‘I don’t think the relationship was scandalous. He’s somebody I really cared about. We had so much in common, including that need to be accepted for who we are and what we do, rather than how we look,’ she told the publication about her relationship with Sammy.
She added, ‘I’m concerned they’re going to make it all sexual reasons.’
Hollywood icon Kim Novak is voicing a major concern about her forthcoming biopic starring Sydney Sweeney; pictured August 28
Scandalous will star Sydney (pictured August 3) as Kim as it revisits the now-92-year-old actress’ 50s-era romance with fellow entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.
Kim’s undercover love affair with Sammy came to a halt when Columbia Pictures honcho Harry Cohn threatened him with mob violence.
He was adamant that it was ‘bad for business’ for his star actress to be involved with a Black man.
The Guardian caught up with Kim via Zoom while she’s at the Venice Film Festival, where a documentary about her life and career is premiering.
Kim sees the film, titled Kim Novak’s Vertigo, as a ‘full circle’ moment.
‘It’s incredible to feel appreciated and to receive this gift before the end of my life,’ said. ‘I think I’m being honored as much for being authentic as for my acting. It has sort of come full circle.’
In the profile she discussed struggling to maintain a sense of self while in the glaring spotlight of the entertainment industry.
‘They hired you because they thought you have something special, and then the first thing they’d do is try to give you a new face,’ the star said about how she was forced to reinvent herself.
‘They’d want the mouth of Joan Crawford, the hair of Jean Harlow. So by the time you left the makeup chair, it wasn’t even you any more. I needed to fight to keep my own sense of who I was,’ she looked back.
Scandalous will serve as Colman Domingo’s directorial debut; pictured in May
The former silver screen siren is not a fan of the film’s title and doesn’t feel it appropriately encompasses that stage of her life; Kim pictured in 1950
Sammy pictured in 1985 on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
In 2021 Kim opened up to People about her decision to leave Hollywood for good.
‘I had to leave to survive,’ she told the outlet. ‘I lost a sense of who I truly was and what I stood for. I fought all the time back in Hollywood to keep my identity so you do whatever you have to do to hold on to who you are and what you stand for.’
One of the actress-turned-painter’s first points of contention at the time was her name.
‘I was both dazzled and disturbed to see me being packaged as a Hollywood sex symbol,’ Novak wrote in the introduction of her memoir Kim Novak: Her Art and Life.
‘However, I did win my fight over identity. I wouldn’t allow Harry Cohn to take my bohemian roots away by denying me my family name.
‘Novak. I stood my ground and won my first major battle,’ the star, born Marilyn Pauline Novak, continued.
