Sixteen days before the release of Hitchcock, Fox Searchlight has released new stills from the film about legendary director Alfred Hitchcock‘s life and marriage at the time he was making his 1960 horror classic Psycho.
Scarlett Johansson, 27, and Jessica Biel, 30, play the parts of that film’s leading ladies, Janet Leigh and Vera Miles, respectively. In a recent interview with V magazine, Johansson opened up about recreating Psycho‘s iconic shower scene.
“We only had the luxury to shoot the scene for a day, and everybody was feeling very nervous because it involved water and nobody wants the actor to get wet,” she recalled. “They were concerned with modesty and all these things — but I don’t care about any of that stuff and Janet Leigh never did either.”
Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins plays the famous filmmaker. “You have got to be brave, get into the shower, and face Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock jabbing you in the face with a 12-inch kitchen knife,” Johansson said of filming. “As much as Anthony Hopkins is a pussycat, he’s terrifying. Maybe I watched Silence of the Lambs too many times when I was a kid. Maybe I was having some flashbacks. So I didn’t need too much preparation for the scene.”
Directed by Sacha Gervasi, Hitchcock also stars James D’Arcy as actor Anthony Perkins, Helen Mirren as Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville, Ralph Macchio as Joseph Stefano and Toni Collette as Peggy Robertson. For Biel — who wed Justin Timberlake Oct. 19 at the Borgo Egnazia resort in Fasano, Italy — the chance to work with such esteemed company “was a dream.”
“Sacha, our director, is an unbelievable guy. As a human being I love this guy. He instilled so much confidence in me because I was really nervous working with some heavy-hitters on this movie. Every day he just made me feel so loved and so confident in that what I was doing was right. I just felt like I could soar in that kind of an environment,” she told Collider in August. “Working with all those people — Anthony, Helen, Tony, Scarlett and James — it was an unbelievable dream. A ‘smack me in the face, I don’t believe I’m awake’ kind of dream.”
Hitchcock will be released nationwide Nov. 23.
