My Week With Marilyn' Trailer

Michelle Williams in costume as she returns to her trailer during a break in shooting "My Week with Marilyn" in central London.  (Pacific Coast News). Nearly 50 years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains one of the most iconic actresses to ever grace the big screen. Adding to her legacy: the upcoming film My Week with Marilyn, which stars Michele Williams in the titular role, and hits theaters November 4th.

Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams (born September 9, 1980) is an actress best known for her role in "Dawson's Creek" and "Brokeback Mountain." She is the widow of Heath Ledger, and has a daughter named Matilda with the late star. See more about Michelle... 

 

on Sep-15-11 9:40am

(Getty Images | Pacific Coast News)

As the latest issue of Vogue fills newsstands, we'll once again be assaulted with the ghostly image of Marilyn Monroe staring out at us while we buy toothpaste and frozen pizzas. This time the 49-year dead icon inhabits the body of Michelle Williams, but she's the latest in a long line of actresses, models and singers who have acted as Marilyn's medium.

Michelle Williams on the cover of Vogue (From Vogue.com) Williams, photographed by the incomparable Annie Liebovitz for the Vogue spread, admits in the magazine to immersing herself in Monroe's world to prepare for her role in the upcoming film My Week with Marilyn. And that's easy to do. Fraught with drama, madness and impossibly long odds, Monroe's story is so odd that sometimes the plain facts sound like bald fiction.

Whether it's Monroe's humble beginnings, her iconic photographs and performances, or her uninhibited sexuality, time and again she's captured the imaginations of Hollywood starlets.

Michelle Williams

()Williams looks lively and playful in her Monroe-centric Vogue shoot, but the imagery from My Week with Marilyn is decidedly more ghostly. While a trailer has yet to be released, the official website treats us to a milk-white vision of Williams as Monroe that hints at both the contrived nature of the actress and the vulnerable girl at the heart of the film.

Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton is a long-time Monroe fan who was inspired by the blonde bombshell while creating a fragrance released last year. Not only did she dress up like Monroe for its launch, she also channeled the actress for the ad campaign.

"I always loved Marilyn Monroe since I was a little girl," she told reporters at the launch party. "I think she is such an icon. So, I wanted to make the next fragrance totally about her. That is why I was inspired by her to do this."

Lindsay Lohan


Lindsay Lohan has made no attempt to hide the way she idolizes Marilyn Monroe. Her clothing line, 6126, is named after Monroe's birthday (June 1, 1926), and she's written a forward for '60s bombshell Susan Bernard's upcoming Monroe tell-all, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures.

Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe. (From New York magazine) In 2008, Lohan had a chance to truly walk in her idol's shoes (or lack thereof) when she posed for photographer Bert Stern in a recreation of his famed nude photo shoot with Monroe shortly before her death. The Last Sitting, as the shoot is called, was duplicated for New York magazine, and Lohan quickly agreed to sit for the photos, nudity and all.

“I didn’t have to put much thought into it," she told the magazine at the time. "I mean, Bert Stern? Doing a Marilyn shoot? When is that ever going to come up? It’s really an honor.” (The NSFW photo shoot is located here.)

Lohan also dressed up as Monroe in a brief fantasy sequence from Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. (Video below)


Scarlett Johansson
Shortly after Scarlett Johansson was named the new face of Dolce & Gabana's cosmetics line in 2009, the fashion house dressed her up like Monroe for a big ad campaign. A bombshell in her own right, ScarJo has since posed for the company in her own skin, but her physical resemblance to Monroe has been noted throughout her career.

In the infancy of its development, insiders whispered that Johansson was a front-runner for My Week with Marilyn, but she shot down the rumors while speaking with the Wall Street Journal.

"I’ve read that I’ve been approached to play Marilyn in many, many different projects and never been attached to anything," she said. "I don’t know if that’s … a place I’d ever want to go. But never say never."

Susan Griffiths

Most of our readers have probably never heard of Susan Griffiths, but she's played either Marilyn Monroe or a Monroe look-alike in 11 movies and television shows from Pulp Fiction to Quantum Leap to the TV movie Marilyn and Me. When Hollywood needs a Marilyn, Susan is on the rolodex. Most recently she portrayed the late star in an episode of The Defenders. Check out this video from her sint on Nip/Tuck.


More Famous Marilyns

Hollywood's fascination with Monroe is nothing new. Without even getting into every actress who's ever aped her Seven Year Itch "subway grate" pose, here's a rundown of a few more Monroes.

Catherine Hicks (Marilyn: The Untold Story, 1980)
Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino (Norma Jean & Marilyn, 1996)



Barbara Niven (The Rat Pack, 1998)
Poppy Montgomery (Blonde, 2001)
Sophie Monk (The Mystery of Natalie Wood, 2004)

()»Charlotte Sullivan (The Kennedys, 2011)
Naomi Watts (Adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' book, Blonde, due out in 2012)