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The one actor who demanded Alfred Hitchcock to slap her
Alfred Hitchcock was known for giving his actors a hard time, but there was on star who openly asked him to get aggressive for the sake of her performance.
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(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Film Âť Cutting Room Floor
Thu 30 January 2025 16:15, UK
Alfred Hitchcock didnât usually need any encouragement when it came to abusing actors. He didnât reach John Fordâs level of manipulation and vitriol, but he didnât have the greatest respect for the stars who brought his movies to life either. He famously believed that âall actors should be treated like cattleâ and described them as âstupid childrenâ.
More troublingly, he was also more than a little inappropriate with several of his female stars. As his âcattleâ comment suggested, he tended to view his actors as property, especially when they were under contract with him. Tippi Hedren found this out the hard way. When the director took it upon himself to turn her into a star, she quickly learned that the opportunity came with a catch.
Hedren would later come forward to accuse him of sexual assault and stalking, claiming that he had tried to force her to touch him and had attempted to forcibly kiss her. When Hedren tried to extricate herself from the long-term contract she had signed with the director, he allegedly said that he would ruin her career.
If you were a female actor whom Alfred Hitchcock had cast in a film, you would probably want to go out of your way to avoid his abusive tendencies, but Joan Fontaine went the opposite direction. She had the distinction of starring in the directorâs first Hollywood feature, Rebecca. Based on the classic Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name, the film centres on a young woman who marries a mysterious, wealthy older man. When she moves into his manor house to begin married life, she becomes obsessed with his late wife, whose spirit seems to inhabit every inch of the property.
In a 1969 interview, Fontaine recalled that the shoot was extremely challenging. Laurence Olivier played her husband in the film, and Hitchcock liked to keep them at odds. âHe had a habit, whether it was conscious or not, I donât know, but of rather keeping all his actors at loggerheads,â she explained, adding, âIt was good for me because it made me suffer quite a lot and feel quite miserable all the time, and it probably came out that way on screen.â
During one scene, however, she just couldnât find enough misery to give the performance the director wanted. âI had to cry one day quite a lot,â she recalled, âAnd I said, âHitch, I just canât cry anymore.'â He asked her what she was going to do about it, and she asked him to slap her across the face. He was more than happy to.
Not surprisingly, the tears erupted from her eyes, and she managed to carry the scene off to his satisfaction. The volume of tears was âpartly pain,â she acknowledged, but also âa great deal of gratitude for his understanding.â
Fontaine went on to earn an Oscar nomination for her performance in the film, and the painful experience she had working with Hitchcock clearly didnât harm their relationship too severely. A year later, she starred in his thriller Suspicion, playing the wife of a manipulative gambler who might be a murderer (played to pitch-perfect creepiness by Cary Grant). Fontaineâs performance is more nuanced in Suspicion than in Rebecca. She had to play a woman who was being slowly gaslighted by the person she loves, requiring a slow progression of a performance that deservedly won her the Academy Award, no slapping necessary.
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Alfred Hitchcock
