‘WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE GREAT ART?’ JOANNA VANDERHAM WRITES ABOUT PLAYING TIPPI HEDREN IN DOUBLE FEATURE FOR BROADWAY WORLD

 

When I was offered the role of Tippi Hedren in John Logan’s Double Feature, aside from delight, I felt quite a lot of pressure. She is a living icon.

 

Ms Hedren, now a spirited 94-year-old, shot to fame when she starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in 1962. But her relationship with the director was far from glamorous; it was fraught and complex. She has talked in her memoir and in interviews about how ‘Hitch’ treated her, on and off the film set - half a century before the #MeToo movement, before phrases like ‘stalking’ and ‘sexual harassment’ entered our vocabulary. Famously, while filming The Birds, Hitchcock subjected Hedren to five gruelling days of having live birds thrown at her for hours on end, leaving her injured and in tears.

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What strength of character must she have had to stand up for herself? Because by the sounds of things, no one else stood up for her. This is the Tippi who inspired John Logan to write the play. And when I first read Double Feature, Tippi’s story felt like one I needed to tell…

 

Double Feature plays the main stage until 16 March.

READ JOANNA'S FULL GUEST BLOG HERE

BOOK DOUBLE FEATURE HERE