Hitchcock a 'perverted' taskmaster

Alfred Hitchcock's manipulative working relationship with The Birds actress Tippi Hedren is no Hollywood secret.

The abuse and isolation the UK director subjected her to has inspired films and books and Hedren, now 86, is still defined by her experience of working under him.

New details of Hedren and Hitchcock's troubled working relationship have emerged since the publication of her memoir Tippi . Hedren writes that Hitchcock's mistreatment of her continued after the horrors of The Birds.

When Hedren made Marnie with Hitchcock a year later, he installed a "secret door" between his office and her dressing room. She says he would come into her dressing room and "put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became."

Hitchcock died in 1980. After Marnie Hedren appeared in 50 films. She writes that although "Hitchcock may have ruined my career, I never gave him the power to ruin my life".

Hedren said of working with Hitchcock: "It was awful. It was painful, unneeded and sick. It wouldn't happen today."