Kim Novak to receive major honor at Venice Film Festival

Kim Novak is set to be presented with a major honor at the 2025 Venice Film Festival due to her contributions to the film industry.

Despite having left acting behind in the 1960s, she left a major mark through incredible performances in projects like Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Picnic, Pal Joey, Bell, Book and Candle.

Now, the icon will be given the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, which will take place from August 27 to September 6.

Giving a statement available on the festival’s website, Novak wrote, “I am deeply, deeply touched to receive the prestigious Golden Lion Award from such an enormously respected film festival. To be recognized for my body of work at this time in my life is a dream come true. I will treasure every moment I spend in Venice. It will fill my heart with joy.”

The festival’s artistic director, Alberto Barbera said, “Inadvertently becoming a screen legend, 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. She never refrained from criticizing the studio system, choosing her roles, who she let into her private life and even her name. Forced to renounce her given name, Marilyn Pauline, because it was associated with Monroe, she fought to conserve her last name, agreeing, in exchange, to dye her hair that shade of platinum blonde which set her apart.”

He continued, “Independent and nonconformist, she created her own production company and went on strike to renegotiate a salary that was much lower than that of her male co-stars. Thanks to her exuberant beauty; her ability to bring to life characters who were naïve and discreet, as well as sensuous and tormented; and her seductive and sometimes sorrowful gaze, she was appreciated by some of the major American directors of the period.”

RELATED: ASAP Rocky makes surprise comment about third baby with Rihanna