Sydney Sweeney just came off a biopic about Christy Martin in which she went from Size 23 to Size 27 jeans in order to pull off looking like the real-life boxer. It was quite the transformation, and she seemed to enjoy the process. So, it’s not a huge surprise she has another biopic coming up again. This time, however, the woman she’s set to portray doesn’t think she has the right body to pull off the role.
Kim Novak, the 93-year-old actress known for roles in Vertigo and Kiss Me, Stupid, came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s, landing awards nods early for Phffft in 1954. In the ‘60s she took a step back and largely retired from acting, but a new movie will look into her then-taboo relationship with Sammy Davis Jr. in 1957, a relationship that ended when Novak says the studio threatened Davis Jr. until he agreed to back off her and marry a Black woman.
Sydney Sweeney is set to play the actress in the film, but Novak is not happy about the casting:
Article continues belowI would never have approved. [She] sticks out so much above the waist.
It’s Sweeney’s curves that Novak largely objects to. And it’s true that Sweeney has channeled Marilyn Monroe quite a bit more than she’s channeled the slender Novak, even recently while promoting The Housemaid. Beyond that, though, they are both blonde bombshells of a similar age at the time Novak was dating Sammy Davis Jr.
In a longer profile with The Times Of London, the actress admitted the studios kept her on a tight leash during the decades she filmed. She said Columbia Pictures’ boss at the time, Harry Cohn, would have people “follow” her to make sure she wasn’t wasting her “time talking to the person who was selling hot dogs.” As a result of constantly monitoring her weight, she wasn’t curvy. Ms. Sweeney very much is.
The biopic, Scandalous, has been announced, but it’s unclear when it will move forward, as Sydney Sweeney has press for the upcoming Euphoria Season 3 and filming on the book-to-screen adaptation The Housemaid 2 coming up. Then, there’s the Barbarella movie and Gundam, which she’s filming with Noah Centineo. Her dance card is quite full. yet, Novak would prefer the role go to someone else.
[Sammy and I had] so much in common. There’s no way it wouldn’t be a sexual relationship because Sydney Sweeney looks sexy all the time. She was totally wrong to play me.
Elsewhere in the interview, Novak said her iconic role in Vertigo came about because she was trying to prove she was more than just a pretty face in Hollywood.
[The role spoke to my] frustration with them trying to make me over in Hollywood into some kind of glamorous image of what they thought women should look like. It was such a handicap being called pretty, like they only wanted to look at you. To me, it was important to be heard.
I think she and Ms. Sweeney may have more in common than Ms. Novak might think.
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