Alfred Hitchcock ruined Tippi Hedren's career after she refused his sexual advances, the actress has revealed.
Hedren starred in Hitchcock's films The Birds and Marnie, and her experiences with the famed British director have been dramatised in a new HBO movie called The Girl.
Sienna Miller plays Hedren, while Toby Jones portrays Hitchcock in the film, which debuts on October 20.
In The Girl, Hitchcock is portrayed as being obsessed with Hedren - and becomes vindictive when the actress rejects his advances.
Hedren, who is now 82, told a meeting of the Television Critics Association she had to fight to get out of her contract with Hitchcock and lost roles because of it.
"I think he was an extremely sad character," she told the meeting in Beverly Hills.
"We are dealing with a brain here that was an unusual genius - and evil and deviant, almost to the point of dangerous - because of the effect that he could have on people that were totally unsuspecting."
One scene in The Girl shows Hitchcock aggressively forcing a kiss on Hedren in the back seat of a car during the filming of The Birds, which was released in 1963.
He later demands that she makes herself available to him sexually.
The film also suggests that Hitchcock punished Hedren for spurning his advances, sending a prop bird crashing through the glass of a phone booth without warning her.
A further sequence shows her forcing her to work with live birds for five days for the movie's attic scene. Hedren apparently suffered multiple cuts, including to her face, in both cases.
Hedren said she could not easily escape Hitchcock's control because of her contract, and he refused to let her work for other directors once she refused to work with him again after Marnie in 1964.
There were no laws in place at the time to protect women from such harassement.
But Hedren said she managed to "live through it beautifully".
She said: "He ruined my career, but he didn't ruin my life. If this had happened today I would be a very rich woman."
During the Television Critics Association session, Hedren spoke to Miller by phone - exchanging long-distance pleasantries about the newcomer in Miller's life.
The 30-year-old British actress gave birth to a baby girl called Marlow in early July, fathered by her boyfriend Tom Sturridge.
"How's Marlow?" Hedren asked. "She's screaming upstairs," Miller replied.
