Tippi Hedren accuses Hitchcock of sexual harassment in memoir

Actress Tippi Hedren graphically chronicles in a new memoir incidents in which she says she was sexually assaulted and harassed by famed British director Alfred Hitchcock during her star turns in The Birds and Marnie.

Tippi, which goes on sale on Tuesday, documents Hedren's rise from fashion model to movie star and "Hitchcock blonde" after the director spotted her in a commercial and cast her in the lead of the 1963 thriller The Birds.

The book by Hedren, mother of actress Melanie Griffith and grandmother to Fifty Shades of Grey star Dakota Johnson, offers a rare, first-person account of the rotund "master of suspense" that contrasts sharply with Hitchcock's public image as a mild-mannered, self-effacing English gentleman.