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Kim Novak is making a splash in Venice.
The 92-year-old star arrived at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on Aug. 28 and was all smiles as she waved to photographers. The actress, best known for her starring role in the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece Vertigo, last made a major public appearance 10 years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In Venice on Sept. 1, Novak will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Kim Novak’s Vertigo, a documentary about her life, which will also premiere that day.
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Novak’s longtime manager, Sue Cameron, the executive producer of the film, tells PEOPLE, “This documentary has been a dream of mine for over 15 years. I wanted her to be able to experience all of the stardom all over again.”
When Cameron first connected with director Alexandre Philippe, they “clicked.” Three weeks after he agreed to the project, he was in Novak’s living room in Oregon shooting the movie.
“I think it’s truly a masterpiece, and really represents who Kim is,” Cameron says of the film’s intimacy. “Nobody knows who she really is, nobody knows what she went through, the disasters in her childhood, and we cover all of that.” She calls it a “deep mystery,” somewhat parallel to Vertigo, which Novak starred in alongside Jimmy Stewart.
As for Novak’s feelings about sharing her deeply personal story after all this time, Cameron says, “She was stunned by how brilliantly Alexandre captured her in the documentary. She never thought that would be possible. So, she was blown away and crying, and she realizes what a gift this is at this time in her life.”
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“She always wanted to be an artist rather than an actress,” Cameron says, “So, as soon as she could escape from Hollywood, she went back to being the poet and the painter, that’s who she really is.”
Back in 2021, Novak — whose career also included movies like 1957’s Pal Joey, 1958’s Bell, Book and Candle and 1964’s Kiss Me, Stupid — spoke to PEOPLE about her decision to leave Hollywood. “I had to leave to survive,” she said. “It was a survival issue.”
“I lost a sense of who I truly was and what I stood for,” she explained. “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.”
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Once she signed as an actress with Columbia Pictures, Novak was up against a powerful studio who wanted to mold her and her career. She wrote in her 2021 book Kim Novak: Her Art and Life, “I was both dazzled and disturbed to see me being packaged as a Hollywood sex symbol. However, I did win my fight over identity. I wouldn’t allow [Columbia Pictures chief] 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.”
“There was constant pressure to be seen and not heard,” Novak wrote, “especially if you had a pretty face.”
After winding down her acting career in the 1980s, Novak focused on her two loves, art and animals, and eventually moved to the Rogue River Valley of Oregon. “I needed the Pacific Ocean to inspire me, the animals, the beauty,” she told PEOPLE.
