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Kim Novak looked unrecognisable as she collected the Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement after releasing a documentary about her poverty-stricken upbringing.
The actress, 92, whose documentary is called Kim Novak’s Vertigo, channelled old Hollywood glamour in an emerald and black gown to accept the award.
Gone were her brunette locks, as she styled her blonde hair into a blonde bob and accessorised her look with a diamond brooch.
The documentary explores her life, highlighting her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and her journey from stardom to a reclusive life as an artist in Oregon.
Kim stepped away from the limelight but during her occasional public appearances, fans have noted that her face looked very different from her screen years.
Kim’s appearance famously caused a stir back in 2014 when she attended the Oscars with a noticeably puffier face, which drew widespread criticism from viewers.
Even Donald Trump weighed in on her look, tweeting at the time, ‘Kim should sue her plastic surgeon!’
Kim herself addressed this, saying she regretted getting fat injections in her face, which didn’t turn out as she’d hoped.
She also spoke openly about the cruelty of Hollywood’s beauty standards and the harshness of ageism in the industry.
Addressing the backlash in an open letter on Facebook, Kim wrote: ‘After my appearance on the Oscars this year, I read all the jabs. I know what Donald Trump and others said, and I’m not going to deny that I had fat injections in my face.’
She continued: ‘They seemed far less invasive than a facelift. It was done in 2012 for the TCM interview special. In my opinion, a person has a right to look as good as they can, and I feel better when I look better.’
Her tell-all documentary about her extraordinary life tells of her upbringing in Depression-era Chicago, followed by ten years of Hollywood superstardom, and then a retreat from the movie business.
She says of the revelations: ‘I have been feeling the need to free the memories that have been hiding in the closet of my mind.’
Among them are her mother Blanche, who, twice tried to kill her.
First she tried to abort her with knitting needles and then, having failed, attempted to smother her as an infant with a pillow.
She also said that her father Joseph, who she said had mental health issues, kept the body of her dead infant brother in the basement of the family home, in a jar.
In the film she says: ‘The Depression caused so much hardship. My mother got pregnant and she could not afford a child.
‘She tried to abort me with knitting needles and it failed. So she tried to suffocate me with a pillow.
‘I remember fighting to stay alive. I won, I stayed alive, and made it through.’
She added that it was her sister who found her brother’s foetus in the basement, amid her father’s collection of animals and insects.
‘The foetus, his only son, in the basement. He kept him,’ she said.
Catholic Joseph Novak had been a teacher in Czechoslovakia but worked as a railroad dispatcher in America.
‘He never approved of her stardom, never told her he was proud of her, and didn’t come to see most of her films.
Film maker Alexandre Phillippe said that he was astonished to have the voice mail from Novak outlining these stories. ‘I gasped, and said, is it too dark?’ he said.
He added: ‘It is a privilege to share all these very powerful secrets and memories.’
Novak journeyed from her 13 acre horse ranch in Oregon to accept the honour from the festival.
