Kim Novak opens up about cold and 'difficult' dad

Kim Novak’s dad wasn’t exactly the proud type, and the 92-year-old veteran actress is opening up about the relationship.

Kim is opening up about her relationship with her parents, her short-lived but memorable Hollywood career, and more in her new documentary Kim Novak's Vertigo, which is screening at the prestigious Venice Film Festival.

"My father was a very strict man and difficult," she recalled.

"He had so much passion, but it was, like, locked up," she explained.

"If a person doesn't ever get it out, I think that sometimes they feel like they've failed," the Picnic actress continued.

Kim thinks her dad’s own struggle made it hard for him to accept that she was successful.

"When I took him to Czechoslovakia (Novak is of Czech descent), he got these intense migraines. He couldn't take that I was successful," she shared.

"I mean, I think, I have to assume that he was proud of me, but he never showed it," she added.

However, when director Alexandre O. Philippe showed the Vertigo star a list of 14 points her dad wrote to guide her; she was compelled to think that he did love her.

The list was dated "4/24/53" and labelled "For Kim First Days in Movies," one of which was "Keep you feet warm, your head cool, you mouth closed, and your bowels open."

"Wow," Novak remarked. "He cared. And he understood. See I, sometimes, maybe I've given you the wrong impression about my dad because this is all such caring, loving advice, and it makes sense. I mean, to me that's showing he loved me."

Kim Novak's star shined in Hollywood in the 1950s. the actress made a lasting impression with her roles in 1955's Picnic and The Man with the Golden Arm, 1957's Pal Joey, and 1958's Vertigo and Bell, Book and Candle. She left Hollywood in the late '60s and has made very few on-screen appearances since.