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No one had heard of Tippi Hedren before Alfred Hitchcock discovered her.

That’s the Hollywood version of the story, because of course Tippi Hedren began her career on her own: first as a model and as a commercial actress. It was in one of those commercials that the great director spotted her and set out to make her star. He brought her in for a screen test (in which she performed scenes from several of his previous films), had the famed costume designer Edith Head create a personal wardrobe for her, and gifted her with a gold pin in the shape of three birds upon the offer for her first film role: as Melanie Daniels in his 1963 film The Birds, based on a short story by Rebecca novelist Daphne du Maurier.

It was nearly a two-year process from their first contact to the time the film was released in theaters, and in that time Hitchcock coached Hedren on how to be an actress. In addition with supplying her with a wardrobe, he handled her publicity, imploring that her name be printed in magazines and newspapers as ‘Tippi’ — the single quotes included. (Editors, naturally, refused to abide by Hitchcock’s quite insane style guide for his newest star’s name.)

Despite the stress of shooting the movie (live birds, with rubber bands around their beaks, were thrown at the actress during the film’s more action-packed scenes), The Birds made Hedren a star, earning her a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year (which she shared with The Prize’s Elke Sommer and Dr. No’s Ursula Andress). And why wouldn’t she work with her mentor on another film, especially when international icon (and then princess of Monaco) Grace Kelly passed on the highly sexualized role?

As the titular Marnie, Hedren had the role most actresses dream of: a complex, mysterious leading lady and a hugely controversial role. Marnie is a psychological thriller, with Hedren playing a compulsive thief who marries one of her victims — a man, played by Sean Connery, who blackmails and then rapes her. That’s only the first of her traumas, which ultimately reveal a life full of forgotten, distressing memories.

The behind-the-scenes drama proved to be just as disturbing for its star, who would be the last of Hitchcock’s infamous icy blondes. Years after Hitchcock’s death, Hedren would admit that she began to feel extremely uncomfortable around her director, who was obsessive about her appearance offscreen. Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto’s The Dark Side of a Genius included a chapter devoted to Hedren and her relationship with the director, which she described as possessive and, to put it mildly, a little creepy. She admitted that during the filming of Marnie, Hitchcock made sexual advances toward her, and her refusal only made his behavior more aggressive. (Meanwhile, Hedren has said, he kept her from accepting other film roles.)

While Hedren and Hitchcock’s relationship has caused much controversy, especially following the release of the HBO film The Girl, which stars Sienna Miller as Hedren and Toby Jones as Hitchcock, there are plenty of figures from those days who have corroborated Hedren’s stories. Rod Taylor, who played the romantic lead in The Birds, noticed Hitchcock’s apparent possessiveness over his beautiful co-star. North By Northwest star Eva Marie Saint told an interviewer that all of Hitchcock’s leading ladies had a different relationship with the director; “I mean, look at how he tried to overpower Tippi Hedren,” she said, “not only in her career, but in her life. He never did that with me.”

Hedren, of course, told Donald Spoto that she kept silent for a long time about her uncomfortable feelings about Hitchcock for simple reasons: he was an important Hollywood director with plenty of power, able to make or break her career. Marnie was a moderate success, but it was not the critical or commercial smash Hitchcock himself had expected. Hedren did not achieve the success of Hitchcock’s most famous leading lady despite his attempts to mold her in Grace Kelly’s image. Despite Hitchcock’s incredible artistry, it’s certainly not beyond the realm of reason to accept that the great director, known for his talent at making audiences shiver and squirm, wasn’t as equally discomforting with the women onto which he focused his lens.