Marilyn Monroe

Brit born Aussie Naomi Watts, 41, is to play Marilyn Monroe in a biopic of Marilyn’s life. That's Naomi Watts above as Marilyn, the real Marilyn below.

The movie starts filming in January and will be called Blonde. It will be based on the controversial biography of Marilyn Monroe, also called Blonde, by US author Joyce Carol Oates. Released in 2000, it is an “imagined memoir” which features detailed sex scenes, including one with President John F Kennedy whilst he is on the phone to Fidel Castro. Two other Marilyn Monroe movies are also in the works. Marilyn is based on accounts by former deputy LA Coroner Lionel Grandison that he was forced to falsify the death certificate from murder to suicide. My Week with Marilyn is based on Marilyn’s filming of The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier.

It will be interesting to see whether any of the proposed flicks will capture the fragility and the inner sadness and loneliness behind the public Marilyn, who craved love and respect but ended up the plaything of a succession of famous and powerful men.

Marilyn Monroe quotes:

Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.

I'm trying to find myself as a person, sometimes that's not easy to do. Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do. The best way for me to find myself as a person is to prove to myself that I am an actress.

People respect you because they feel you've survived hard times and endured, and although you've become famous, you haven't become phony.

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can't I just be an ordinary woman? A woman who can have a family ... I'd settle for just one baby. My own baby.

My illusions didn't have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But, my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve!

Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don't expect me to be serious about my work.

Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

If I play a stupid girl and ask a stupid question I've got to follow it through. What am I supposed to do - look intelligent?

People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.

Everyone's just laughing at me. I hate it. Big breasts, big ass, big deal, Can't I be anything else ? Gee, how long can you be sexy?

To a reporter: Please don't make me a joke.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 About Marilyn Monroe, by her ex-husband, Arthur Miller: "To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was. Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes."