Alfred Hitchcock's iconic horror film Psycho left actress too scared to do simple act for rest of her life
Topics: Film and TV, Celebrity
Ellie Kemp
Featured Image Credit: Bettmann via Getty Images/Archive Photos/Getty Images
Topics: Film and TV, Celebrity
Janet Leigh admitted she struggled with an everyday task after starring in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 mystery-horror Psycho.
As soon as you hear those words - Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho - what springs to mind?
It's that iconic shower scene, right?
Perhaps the most-recognized scene in TV and film history, it sees Leigh play Marion Crane, who is then stabbed to death by Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates.
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The scene - and its technical work - cemented Hitchcock as one of the greatest filmmakers of our time.
In fact, the entire movie ushered in a new convention, and even revolutionized the way we experience cinema to this day.
Did you know that before Psycho came out, theaters would screen movies on a loop?
People could walk in whenever, then fill in the gaps as the movie replayed.
But Psycho's twists and turns would've been majorly spoiled if this was allowed.
So Hitchcock and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer got cinemas to enforce start times - and the rest is history.
Anyway, back to that shower scene...
It took an entire week to shoot - a third of the movie's entire filming schedule.
And its impact on Leigh - who is the mother of actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis, whom she shared with actor Tony Curtis - was long-lasting.
She told the New York Times in 1995: "I stopped taking showers and I take baths, only baths."
She admitted that when she stayed overnight in a hotel or at a friend's home where only a shower was available, she panicked.
Leigh then explained the precautions she took each time, adding: "I make sure the doors and windows of the house are locked and I leave the bathroom door open and shower curtain open.
"I'm always facing the door, watching, no matter where the shower head is."
Leigh said that both Perkins and Hancock himself were affected by the scene too.
The star went on to write a book about her experience of starring in the film, titled Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller.
Despite the phobia she'd picked up from Psycho, Leigh stuck with the horror genre, starring alongside daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in 1980's The Fog and 1998's H20: 20 Years Later.
The iconic actor sadly died at her Beverly Hills home in 2004 at the age of 77 after a long battle with vasculitis, a disorder which destroys blood vessels by inflammation, which she'd kept private.