Kim Novak says she's bipolar, regrets leaving Hollywood

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2012/04/kim-novak-says-shes-bipolar-regrets-leaving-hollywood.html?track=lat-pick



Actress Kim Novak told an audience at the TCM Classic Film Festival Friday that she has bipolar disorder, and sometimes regrets her decision to leave Hollywood in the late 1960s at the height of her fame.

The star of such films as "Vertigo," "Pal Joey" and "Picnic," Novak was teary-eyed and emotional when she told Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne before an audience of about 300 people at the Avalon in Hollywood that she suffered from mental illness while making those films.

"I'm bipolar ... but there's medicine you can take for this now," Novak said. "I was not diagnosed until much later. I go through more of the depression than the mania part."

Novak, 79, is in Los Angeles to have her handprints and footprints enshrined in the forecourt at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Saturday, a sign of the recognition she said she hungered for throughout her life.