Novak, 79, left her signature marks on the famous ground as a sign of the recognition she said she hungered for throughout her life. Actresses Debbie Reynolds and Connie Stevens and director Norman Jewison joined her at the ceremony.

　　The event was held in connection with the four-day TCM Classic Film Festival which features a screening of "Vertigo," one of Novak's major box-office hits, and her taping of an interview with the television channel's host Robert Osborne.

　　Novak was never nominated for an Academy Award. An attractive blond in Hollywood, she had struggled against notions of what kind of roles she should play.

　　In an interview with Osborne during the film festival before a 300-people audience Friday, Novak said she sometimes regrets her decision to leave Hollywood in the late 1960s at the heyday of her fame. "I don't think I was ever cut out to have a Hollywood life," Novak said. "Did I do the right thing, leaving? Did I walk out when I shouldn't have? That's when I get sad."

　　A teenager model-turned-actress, Novak played her first starring role in the 1953 crime melodrama "Pushover." Best known for her role as Judy Barton in the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film " Vertigo," Novak played her last major role in the 1991 thriller " Liebestraum," casting as an estranged mother who only found unpleasant truths after returning home.

　　Since the theater opened in 1927, hundreds of outstanding stars in the film industry have had their handprints and footprints in the forecourt.