Does Michelle Williams Dazzle As Marilyn Monroe?

Yes

Indie ingenue Michelle Williams, who's already collecting praise for her portrayal and stunning likeness of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn, told Vogue magazine that, ironically, she grew up with pictures of the iconic blonde bombshell plastered to her bedroom wall. “I had one of her in a field of trees in Roxbury, Connecticut. She’s wearing a white dress and she’s barefoot and she’s got her arms spread and she’s laughing. There was just something about that image of her—so lovely and joyful and free. I’ve always thought of her as that woman-child, not an icon, which is probably why I let myself approach the role.” Is Michelle Williams the best fit so far in finding an actress to honor the starlet's memory?

“Not only is she beautiful and brilliant,” the film’s director, Simon Curtis says of Williams, “but she brings such intellect to her work along with an intuitive grasp of character, extraordinary depth of feeling, and a kind of innate glamour—I guess we call it star quality, don’t we? For a director, it’s the dream package.”

"Williams spent six months immersing herself in all things Monroe," Vogue tells of her process. "She read biographies, diaries, letters, poems, and notes, pored over photographs, listened to recordings, watched movies, and tracked down obscure clips on YouTube."

“I’d go to bed every night with a stack of books next to me,” she recalls. “And I’d fall asleep to movies of her. It was like when you were a kid and you’d put a book under your pillow hoping you’d get it by osmosis.”

To work around her own naturally gamine face and frame, Williams had to gain weight and study with a choreographer in imitating the voluptuous pin-up physique. “Unfortunately, it went right to my face,” she said, puffing up her cheeks. “So at some point it became a question of, Do I want my face to look like Marilyn Monroe’s or my hips?” Foam padding was eventually decided upon to provided the fuller hips so that Williams could maintain a more sleek face. In the end, she says, “it felt like being reborn. It felt like breaking my body and remaking it in her image, learning how she walked and talked and held her head. None of that existed in my physical memory, and I knew I needed as much time as possible to make it part of me.”

My Week with Marilyn opens at the New York Film Festival this month. Will winsome Michelle Williams impress as the doomed dream girl?

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue

Casandra Armour

Does Michelle Williams Dazzle As Marilyn Monroe?

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