AceShowbiz - Dakota Johnson has claimed the late Alfred Hitchcock "ruined" her grandmother Tippi Hedren's career.

The "Fifty Shades of Grey" actress claimed the star "was encouraging" of her acting ambitions, despite the things she endured in Hollywood, but always urged her granddaughter to stand up for herself.

Speaking during a live taping of The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast, Dakota said, "She's always been really honest and firm about standing up for yourself. That's what she did."

"Hitchcock ruined her career because she didn't want to sleep with him, and he terrorised her. He was never held accountable."

Dakota admitted it was "hard to talk about" what happened to her grandmother - who claimed in her memoir that the director had sexually assaulted her several times when they worked together on "The Birds" and "Marnie" - but both her elderly relative and her mother, Melanie Griffith, have instilled in her that she shouldn't put up with being treated badly at work.

Growing emotional, she said, "It's completely unacceptable for people in a position of power to wield that power over someone in a weaker position, no matter the industry."

"It's hard to talk about because she's my grandmother. You don't want to imagine somebody taking advantage of your grandmother."

"I think the thing that she's been so amazing for me and with my mother is just like, no you do not put up with that s**t from anybody."

"She would say it in a far more eloquent way. She's such a glamorous movie star, still."

The "I Heart Huckabees" star recalled her experiences with Hitchcock - who died in 1980 - in her 2016 autobiography, describing how he often had his driver go past her house and during the shooting of "The Birds" and asked her to "touch him."

Tippi told of the "awful, awful moment" when Hitchcock tried to force her to kiss him in the back of a limo, as well as when he "put his hands" on her in a "perverse" moment in her dressing room while shooting "Marnie".

But she never told anyone at the time because "sexual harassment and stalking were terms that didn't exist" in the early 1960s.