Ray Berwick, the bird trainer on The Birds (1963), is depicted as having contempt for Sir Alfred Hitchcock, even referring to him at one point as "the old fool". In reality, Berwick always spoke of Hitchcock with the utmost respect and affection, working with him again on Topaz (1969).
The widow of James H. Brown, Sir Alfred Hitchcock's assistant on The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), has insisted that the depiction of her husband in this movie is inaccurate and that the information her husband gave to Screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes in an interview before he died in 2011, was either ignored or distorted. His remarks to Hughes on the subject of Sir Alfred Hitchcock had been, in reality, entirely admiring and complimentary. Mrs. Brown has attacked this movie savagely as an insult to a great artist.
Sir Sean Connery and Louise Latham, who respectively played Tippi Hedren's husband and mother in Marnie (1964), repeatedly told interviewers that they had seen nothing untoward in Sir Alfred Hitchcock's behavior towards Hedren during shooting.
Sienna Miller met with Tippi Hedren, the character she was set to play, at her Shambala Preserve in Acton, California. Sienna spent a day with Tippi as part of her research for the role, and the pair became great friends after the experience.