Much has been made over the years about why Vertigo icon Kim Novak did what many seemed unthinkable when she fled Hollywood and said goodbye to an enviable and still thriving acting career that saw her collaborate with everyone from Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart to Billy Wilder and Frank Sinatra.

But her longtime manager and confidante, Sue Cameron, revealed a surprising new reason for Novak’s departure while participating in a press conference at the Venice Film Festival, which hosted the world premiere Alexandre O. Philippe’s new documentary Kim Novak’s Vertigo. Cameron claimed it all came down to … sour pickles?

By the time she started shooting Richard Quine’s 1965 film The Notorious Landlady opposite Jack Lemmon and Fred Astaire, Novak had made up her mind that she hated Hollywood and was ready to leave, Cameron said. So when she and her sister went for a drive near picturesque Carmel, Calif., not far from where they were shooting the film, the siblings happened upon a gorgeous property.

“[They] found this extraordinary house that Kim named ‘Gull House,’ which is all glass and rock right near Big Sur, right over the sea. She bought that house immediately on that day in the middle of shooting,” explained Cameron, who executive produced the documentary. “She intended to use it for weekends whenever she was unhappy in Hollywood, so she always had an escape. In the back of her mind, she was planning the escape already, and that way she had a place to go to.”

Her plans accelerated when a 1966 mudslide claimed her Bel-Air, Calif. home.

“She lived across the street from the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles, up on a hill, and the hill slid away. She said, ‘Well, this is the sign.’ Kim strongly believes in signs, and she said, ‘Well, that’s it. I’m supposed to leave. My house is going, I’m leaving.’ She took the dogs, and she got in the car,” Cameron explained during the Q&A session. “Kim loves pickles. This sounds crazy, but she loves certain pickles, like a certain sour pickle, and she drove to where she could always get the pickles, and they were out of the pickles. She said, ‘That’s it. That’s a sign there are no more pickles. I’m leaving. I’m gone.’ It was the pickle the last minute that made her say, ‘I’m not coming back.’ And she didn’t.”

Novak’s decision to leave is also well documented in the festival selection, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, from Swiss filmmaker Philippe, as are passions for animals, painting and her late equine veterinarian husband. The doc is being shown out of competition in Venice in conjunction with the festival presenting a lifetime achievement award to Novak, who received her prize on Monday from Guillermo del Toro and festival director Alberto Barbera. In his tribute, del Toro noted Novak’s decision to bid adieu to the business. “Remarkably, she also chose to slow down, to take a break at the peak of her powers and to seek personal fulfillment raising horses and as a lyricist and a painter.”

In The Hollywood Reporter critic Leslie Felperin’s review of the doc, she writes that Philippe “may take writing, directing and co-producing credits here, and appears onscreen as Novak’s interviewer, but it’s Novak who feels like the one who’s largely in charge.” Cameron confirmed that Novak is always in the driver’s seat in every aspect of her life.

“Speaking of someone who has represented her for decades, she only gives you what she chooses to give you. She controls every single interview and decides if she’s doing a phone or if she’s doing a zoom, she’ll look at the person, or she’ll get a sound of the voice, and she’ll decide how much she wants to give,” she said of the actress, who talks in the documentary about her bipolar diagnosis and how that affected her decisions. “This is a woman who never gives up. She won’t do anything unless she wants to do it. The surprise of the film is the revelations about her childhood. When you see the movie, you will understand what made her become the way she is.”