VENICE — The Venice Film Festival celebrated Hollywood actress Kim Novak yesterday, bestowing a lifetime achievement award to the reluctant star and platinum blonde heroine of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, now 92.

Novak received a standing ovation and extended applause when handed her Golden Lion award from Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, ahead of the world premiere of the documentary “Kim Novak’s Vertigo”, directed by Alexandre Philippe.

Wearing an emerald and black silk gown, the former screen siren who chose to defy the Hollywood studio system raised her arms in acknowledgement of the cheers, mouthing “thank you” to the audience.

“I’d like to thanks the gods up there in Heaven, all of them. Not one in particular. Just all of them,” said Novak.

“They have given me such a gift but they they waited, they waited until it would be the most meaningful in my life, at the end of my lifetime to get this from you.”

Novak is best known for playing the chilling dual role of suicidal blonde Madeleine Elster and brunette shop girl Judy Barton in the 1958 Hitchcock classic Vertigo, playing opposite James Stewart.

But she had a short-lived career, refusing to accept the iron-fisted rule of studio executives and walking away from Hollywood less than a decade later to focus on painting.

Novak was “one of the most beloved icons of an entire era of Hollywood films... until her premature and voluntary exile from the gilded cage of Los Angeles” said the festival’s artistic director, Alberto Barbera, in announcing the award in June.

Novak’s other memorable roles included a big-hearted prostitute in Billy Wilder’s 1964 Kiss Me, Stupid, a witch in Richard Quine’s Bell, Book and Candle (1958) and an adulteress in another Quine film, Strangers When We Meet (1960).