The Venice Film Festival celebrated Hollywood actress Kim Novak on Monday, bestowing a lifetime achievement award to the reluctant star and platinum blonde heroine of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”, now 92.Novak received a standing ovation and extended applause when handed her Golden Lion award from Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, ahead of the world premiere of the documentary “Kim Novak’s Vertigo”, directed by Alexandre Philippe.Wearing an emerald and black silk gown, the former screen siren who chose to defy the Hollywood studio system raised her arms in acknowledgement of the cheers, mouthing “thank you” to the audience.”I’d like to thanks the gods up there in Heaven, all of them. Not one in particular. Just all of them,” said Novak.”They have given me such a gift but they they waited, they waited until it would be the most meaningful in my life, at the end of my lifetime to get this from you.”  Novak is best known for playing the chilling dual role of suicidal blonde Madeleine Elster and brunette shop girl Judy Barton in the 1958 Hitchcock classic “Vertigo”, playing opposite James Stewart. But she had a short-lived career, refusing to accept the iron-fisted rule of studio executives and walking away from Hollywood less than a decade later to focus on painting.Novak was “one of the most beloved icons of an entire era of Hollywood films… until her premature and voluntary exile from the gilded cage of Los Angeles” said the festival’s artistic director, Alberto Barbera, in announcing the award in June.Novak’s other memorable roles included a big-hearted prostitute in Billy Wilder’s 1964 “Kiss Me, Stupid”, a witch in Richard Quine’s “Bell, Book and Candle” (1958) and an adulteress in another Quine film, “Strangers When We Meet” (1960).- Hiding from the limelight -In a press conference earlier Monday, Novak’s manager, Sue Cameron — who is also the film’s executive producer — said Novak “does not like the limelight”, preferring to “be at home with her horses and her dogs”. “I wanted to give this as a present to her because she’s been so hidden all these years. I wanted her to have one more ‘Pow!’ in her life,” said Cameron of the film.”She’s now 92. She exercises with weights every day. She walks. She has a 13-acre ranch with three islands on it and horses and horse meadows. She rides the horses. She walks around the meadow. She does not give up. This is not someone who acts her age,” Cameron said.After years of avoiding the limelight, Novak was a guest of honour at the Cannes film festival in 2013, attending a special screening to mark the restoration of “Vertigo”.As a presenter at the 2014 Academy Awards, Novak was subject to a wave of cruel commentary about her appearance.In her later years, Novak, who was married twice, including to equine veterinarian Robert Malloy from 1976 to his death in 2020, and raised horses and llamas in Oregon and California.

Nine former leaders of the top US health body sounded the alarm Monday about the Trump administration’s evisceration of the agency and warned that vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr is “endangering every American’s health.”The blunt guest essay in The New York Times marks the latest in snowballing attacks on the US health secretary after the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was recently fired by President Donald Trump after just weeks in her post.Susan Monarez was fired last week after clashing with RFK Jr and reportedly refusing to commit to supporting his vaccination policy changes. The ouster triggered the resignation of at least four top officials and plunged the agency deeper into chaos.”We ran the CDC: Kennedy is endangering every American’s health,” warned the opinion piece penned by nine former leaders of the historically independent agency who served under every president, Democrat or Republican, from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump.What Kennedy has done to the CDC and the nation’s public health system — “culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as CDC director days ago — is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced,” the experts wrote.They mentioned how Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers; weakened programs aimed at protecting Americans from cancer, heart attacks and more; and, during the country’s largest measles outbreak in decades, focused on “unproven ‘treatments’ while downplaying vaccines.”He also championed federal legislation that is expected to kick millions of people off their health insurance, they said.”This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings,” said the experts, including doctor Anne Schuchat, who served as CDC acting director in Trump’s first term.The blistering criticism comes one day after Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned in protest from his role as director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases after Monarez was ousted, warned that “the firewall between science and ideology has completely broken down” at the agency.Meanwhile Trump said he wants more information released publicly about the “various Covid Drugs” introduced during the pandemic.”Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree!” Trump posted on Truth Social.”With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.”