Hollywood legend Kim Novak has taken aim at plans for Sydney Sweeney to play her in an upcoming movie.

Scandalous! is set to tell the story of Vertigo star Novak’s relationship with black entertainer Sammy Davis jr in the 1950s.

The project – to be the directoral debut for actor and playwright Colman Domingo – was first announced in 2024, with Sweeney set to play Novak and David Jonsson (The Long Walk) cast as Davis.

But Novak, now aged 93, has some concerns.

In an interview with Britain’s with The Times newspaper published over the weekend, the former leading lady  said “I would never have approved” the casting of Sweeney.

In an apparent reference to Sweeney’s figure, Novak said the Euphoria actress “sticks out so much above the waist”.

Sweeney, who is yet to react to Novak’s comments, has previously said she was “incredibly honoured to be bringing Kim to life”.

Now 93, Novak’s career spanned five decades. Photo: Getty

“I mean, she is such an amazing actress,” she told People magazine in October.

“I think her story is still very relevant today in that she dealt with Hollywood and scrutiny with her relationships and her own private life and the control of her image,” Sweeney said.

“And I think that for me, I relate to it in a lot of different ways.”

Novak and Davis had a brief relationship in 1957, which was met with outrage by Hollywood’s elite.

It is alleged that Harry Cohn, then head of Columbia Pictures, used mob affiliates to threaten Davis with violence to end the relationship.

“Cohn paid for a mobster to threaten to break Davis’s legs and blind him unless he married a black woman, which he quickly did,” The Times reported, adding that Novak confirmed that the story was true.

Novak has previously expressed reservations about the plan to bring her short-lived relationship with Davis, who died in 1990, to the screen.

“I don’t think the relationship was scandalous,” she told the Guardian in 2025.

“He’s somebody I really cared about. We had so much in common, including that need to be accepted for who we are and what we do, rather than how we look. But I’m concerned they’re going to make it all sexual reasons.”

Scandalous! would recount Novak’s relationship with Davis. Photo: Wikimedia

She reiterated those reservations to The Times, saying: “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.”

In a 2024 interview with entertainment industry site Deadline, Domingo suggested his motives for making Scandalous! were not salacious.

“Hopefully we’ll make a beautiful, sweet film that’s really about the possibility of love, but under many eyes, trying to have privacy, trying to have love, trying to have a life,” he said.

“I think it’s something that Sydney and I both know very well. We’re trying to advocate for your humanity again in your life.”

As well as Alfred Hitchcock’s critically acclaimed 1958 thriller Vertigo, Novak starred in such classic movies as  The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and Pal Joey (1957).

In later life she appeared in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d in 1980 and was a regular role on the primetime soap opera series Falcon Crest from 1986 to 1987.