Alfred Hitchcock's 10 Hottest Muses

In Hitchcock, which sees a limited release this Friday, Anthony Hopkins plays the legendary director during the filming of one of his best-known films, Psycho (1960). The film is about Hitchcock's unusual relationship with his wife Alma, who comes off, in this telling, as the secret genius behind her famous husband.

Hitchcock happens to feature two of Hollywood's top babes playing top babes of yesteryear: Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh and Jessica Biel as Vera Miles. This is no coincidence.

Hitchcock tended to put beautiful actresses into his movies, often multiple movies in succession. They tended to be blonde (if they weren't, he had wigs) and specialized in conveying a repressed sexuality. To put it mildly, these were the portly director's crushes. In some cases, to put it less mildly, they were his prey. He was a weird dude, and not a quirky weird, or a lovable weird. A walking-sexual-harassment suit weird. (For more on that story, see the HBO TV movie The Girl, starring Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren.)

To put it poetically, they were his muses.

Leigh, Miles, Ingrid Bergman and more—in their day, these were among the most beautiful stars in Hollywood. We're counting down the top ten.

RELATED: The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies

Follow @ComplexPopCult

Movie: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Doris Day is best remembered as a comedic actress with a good set of pipes, but she acquitted herself well in this thriller. And Hitch had very little to do with it. He didn't give her much direction on set, which she found concerning. So, she asked him what was up. "You have been doing what I felt was right for the film," he told her, "and that's why I haven't told you anything."

Although Day hasn't described Hitch as the tormentor Hedren knew, the director did leave a sick mark on her entire career. Day hated the song she had to sing in the film, and almost refused to record it. The song was "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)"—which would become the theme of her '60s TV show and her signature song.

Movies: Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941)

In terms of industry recognition, the two films Hitch made with Joan were a high water mark. She was the female lead in Hitchcock's first Hollywood movie, Rebecca, which won him his only Best Picture Oscar. Joan was nominated for Best Actress in both of her Hitchcock movies, and won for Suspicion.

Movie: Lifeboat (1950)

Having Tallulah Bankhead, one of Hollywood's most notorious libertines, and Hitchcock on the same movie set was an obvious recipe for...something. Bankhead was famous for getting naked at parties, doing lots of drugs, bisexuality, and dropping scandalous quips that made listeners spit out their drinks. Ex: "I was raped in a driveway when I was eleven," she once announced. "It was a terrible experience, because we had all that gravel."

The film called for a lot of water and wetness, and Tallulah was doused with such frequency that she reportedly caught pneumonia twice during filming. Was Hitchcock being sadistic? Who knows, but he did feel some remorse, awarding her a puppy when the film finished shooting.

Movies: The Wrong Man (1956), Psycho (1960)

Hitch had big plans for Vera Miles, publicly designating her "the girl who is going to replace Grace Kelly." What that meant privately is up for discussion, given Hitch's infatuation with Kelly, but stories from the filming of The Wrong Man indicate that Hitch was overbearing—perhaps to the point of what we now call sexual harrassment but never abusive. There was also a certain flimsy excuse of method to his belligerence—Miles' character cracks under pressure, and in real life, the director was turning up the pressure on his actress.

Miles got married during the course of filming, a development which seems to have restored the professionalism to her relationship with Hitch. Miles, and not Kim Novak, was Hitch's first choice for Vertigo, but she couldn't take the role due to pregnancy. Though denied what might have been her rightful place as one of Hitchcock's major muses, she did work with him more than most. In addition to her other feature, Psycho, she appeared on his television dramas several times.

Movie: Psycho (1960)

Sure, Hitch was a little rough and grabby with the ladies in real life, but onscreen he preferred emotional violence to physical, with only a couple of exceptions. Psycho is the most notable (with The Birds coming in second place, poor Tippi); the "shower scene" in which Janet Leigh is stabbed to death was appallingly graphic for its time, and is still unsettling to watch 52 years later.

Psycho was also Hitchcock at his most obviously prurient, when in another shocking scene the audience is invited to watch along, through a hole in the wall, with Norman Bates as he peeps Janet Leigh stripping down to her cone-tastic '50s-style bra.

Movie: Vertigo (1958)

Novak and Hitch didn't have a warm-and-fuzzy relationship, but she recalls the director as being firm but fair. She disliked the wardrobe choices, and the wig she was made to wear (she was actually famous for wearing her hair short in previous films). So, when Hitch denied her requests to ditch the grey suit and black shoes her character wears, Novak channeled her physical uncomfortability into a character trait.

Movies: Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Under Capricorn (1949)

The Hitchcock-muse relationships are often characterized by the actresses' rejection of Hitch's advances, but Ingrid Bergman might be the exception. There's a running debate as to whether they did or didn't have an affair, with those on the "did" side believing Ingrid begged Alfred to leave Alma. When the director refused, Bergman threw herself at Roberto Rossellini, and the adulterous affair yielded twin love-children (one of whom is Isabella Rossellini). The episode nearly ended Bergman's Hollywood career. All because, allegedly, the portly and pervy Hitch wouldn't run away with arguably the most beautiful actress of her day. Seems legit.

Movie: North by Northwest (1959)

For our money, Eva Marie Saint was Hitchcock's greatest femme fatale: A kind soul with an edge and an unashamed interest in doing it with Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), who starts thinking he could get on board with this spy shit if these are the fringe benefits. Eva Marie's character was pushing the boundaries at the time, and in Hitchcock's original cut she stepped over them. The line, "I never make love on an empty stomach" had to be redubbed with, "I never discuss love on an empty stomach" to satisfy the Production Code Administration.

When asked for a Vanity Fair profile whether she had experienced any of the nastiness Hitch foisted on Tippi, Eva Marie said she never had a problem with the director: “But that was a different scenario. I was married and he really liked my husband.”

Movies: The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964)

Poor, poor Tippi. If you caught The Girl on HBO, you saw, essentially, Hedren's account of her awful experience making The Birds—and we're not doubting its truth. This was late Hitchcock, he'd been making brilliant films and bossing around stunning blondes for decades, and perhaps his ultra-creepiness was a symptom of fatigue.

He reportedly manhandled Hedren in the back seat of a car, and in a separate incident, informed her that she must be "sexually available" to him at all times. Things were not much better on set, where his directing style seemed sadistic at times. They do say you always hurt the ones you love, so perhaps he loved her.

Movies: Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955)

With three films to her credit (out of just 14 she made in her short career), Grace Kelly could be considered the ultimate Hitchcock muse. And according to Hitchcock's Blonde: Grace Kelly and Alfred Hitchcock, by John Hamilton, Kelly was Hitchcock's ideal, and also his undoing.

The future Princess of Monaco had a, ehrm, healthy sexual appetite, and she liked it rough. If Hitch wasn't fucked up when he met Kelly, he certainly was once he got to know her, and his life after her retirement from acting was haunted by her memory. According to Hamilton, both Vertigo and Marnie (starring poor Tippi) were attempts to lure Kelly out of retirement.