Kim Novak to receive Venice film festival career award

ROME: Kim Novak, a Hollywood diva from the 1950s and 1960s who starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”, will be honoured with a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Venice Film Festival, organisers said on Monday.

Best known for her starring role in the 1958 psychological thriller, Novak also held notable roles in classics such as “Kiss Me, Stupid” by Billy Wilder, as well as “Picnic” and “The Man with the Golden Arm”.

The 92-year-old actor will be given the so-called Golden Lion for “inadvertently becoming a screen legend”, the festival’s Artistic Director Alberto Barbera said in a statement.

“Kim Novak was one of the most beloved icons of an entire era of Hollywood films, from her auspicious debut during the mid-1950s until her premature and voluntary exile from the gilded cage of Los Angeles a short while later,” Barbera said, calling her independent and nonconformist.

The documentary “Kim Novak’s Vertigo” by Swiss-American film director Alexandre Philippe, made in cooperation with the actor, will premiere at the festival to accompany the award, organizers said.

“I am deeply, deeply touched to receive the prestigious Golden Lion Award from such an enormously respected film festival. To be recognised for my body of work at this time in my life is a dream come true,” Novak said in the statement.

The 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival will run from August 27 to September 6, 2025. Werner Herzog, the veteran German director of “Fitzcarraldo”, will also receive a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement this year.

The line-up of films in competition is due to be revealed in July.

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