Tippi Hedren - Paige Bowers -- Writer

Photo: movieline.com

I interviewed the actress Tippi Hedren more than a decade ago in Palm Beach, Fla. At the time, I was working as an in-house freelance writer at Palm Beach Illustrated. My boss knew I loved Alfred Hitchcock?s films, so he assigned me to interview and write about Ms. Hedren, who was in town for?the Palm Beach International Film Festival. She was there to promote her film ?Mulligans,? in which she played a golf widow named Dottie. But we were eager to profile her as a living Hitchcock muse and star of ?The Birds.?

I was 24 years old. And so this was an era in my professional life when I found it difficult to detach from the sheer awesomeness of interviewing a real live icon. I didn?t sleep the night before the interview. I couldn?t eat. ?I couldn?t focus on the other stories I had to write. I couldn?t shake the feeling that the stormy weather on interview day was some terrible omen. Would Tippi Hedren cancel?

I drove to the apartment where the interview was supposed to take place and the rain stopped. The clouds parted. The sun peeked through gray sky. Seagulls circled the rooftop of the building I was about to enter.

Yeah. Birds. Lots of them.

The lights were out in the apartment building and the elevator was too. The man at the front desk gave me a flashlight so that I could navigate the stairwell to my destination. Everything was feeling a little Hitchcock, until I knocked on the door of the apartment I sought and was welcomed in to wait. Five, maybe ten minutes went by and then the front door opened, the electricity went back on and Tippi Hedren walked in and said hello.

She was generous with her time that day, an utter delight to interview. But what I remember most is her account of Hitchcock?s obsession with her and how that destroyed her career. Part of me has always wondered what her life would be like if she had worked with another director early on, but I know that ?The Birds? and ?Marnie? wouldn?t have been the same films without her. ?She faced what no woman should have to in the workplace and stayed true to herself and her morals. That took bravery, especially in the early 1960s.?A week from now HBO will debut ?The Girl,? a movie that depicts this era in Hedren?s life. Hedren has helped promote the project and has worked with its screenwriters and the actress Sienna Miller, who plays her in the movie. Hedren said that she ?just froze? when she heard Toby Jones first speak as Hitchcock.

Clearly, this is still painful for Hedren.

Earlier this week, Andrew Goldman of The New York Times Magazine ignited a firestorm when he asked Hedren if she ever considered sleeping with a director to further her career. She said no, and Goldman was taken to task on Twitter by some prominent female writers who felt he was being inappropriate.?Here is how the NYT public editor responded to the imbroglio.

Tagged as: alfred hitchcock, andrew goldman, celebrity interviews, hbo, jennifer weiner, marnie, new york times magazine, sexual harrassment, the birds, the girl, tippi hedren

Source: http://www.paigebowers.com/?p=1060

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