It is a role that a million actresses across the world would give their right arm – and possibly their leg – to play.

But Michelle Williams has admitted that playing Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe was daunting and terrifying and that was before she had even begun filimg.

The 31-year-old actress plays the screen siren in new film My Week With Marilyn which tells the story of Monroe’s four-month stay in the UK to film The Prince and the Showgirl alongside Laurence Olivier.

And Michelle said she almost didn’t take on the role at all, even thought she knew she wanted to the moment she read the script.

And even when director Simon Curtis flew to her New York home to offer her the part, Michelle said she wasn’t sure she could accept and begged him to audition her properly.

Speaking to Elle magazine, she said: ‘I said, “I want both of us to know that I can do this, I don’t want to be offered this role for any other reason than we know that I’m capable of it”.

‘I was so apprehensive. It was daunting living up to people’s expectations as well as my own expectations. I wanted to hop on the next train to the Alps or something and get the hell out because it was terrifying.’

And less than a month before the film is released in the UK, she admitted that the fear hasn’t left her yet, adding: ‘I’ve never been so hanging on a cliff waiting to hear what people think of a movie.’

Michelle, who has six-year-old daughter Matilda from her relationship with late actor Australian Heath Ledger, said she has always admired Monroe, who died aged 36 in August 1962.

She said: ‘Something I really appreciated about her is what a simple dresser she was. She’s really, in her personal life, completely unadorned.

‘Everything that she wore looked like she could take hr shoes off and run through a field. And I like that.’

And Michelle said she was always more interested in Monroe’s private life as opposed to her acting career.

She said: ‘I had always been more interested in the private Marilyn, and the unguarded Marilyn.

‘Even as a young girl, my primary concern wasn’t with this larger than life personality smiling back from the wall but with what was going on underneath.’

The film also stars Dame Judi Dench, Dougray Scott, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson and is released in the UK on November 25.

Article Source: dailymail.co.uk

The dress Marilyn Monroe wore in “River of No Return” has sold to a private buyer for $504,000.

Darren Julien, president and CEO of Julien’s Auctions, said Saturday that the dress was sold at an auction in China. Monroe wore the green velour dress while she sang “I’m Gonna File My Claim” in the 1954 Western in which she portrayed Kay Washington, a gambler’s wife.

Among other items that have been sold at the auction were the bustier that Madonna wore during her “Who’s That Girl” tour in 1987. It has sold for $72,000.

The famous white dress Monroe wore in “The Seven Year Itch” was sold for $4.6 million at an auction this summer.

Article Source: yahoo.com

The Debbie Reynolds Collection auction in June far exceeded its initial estimates, and earned a place in the Guinness World Records after selling Monroe’s iconic white “Subway Dress” for $5.52 million, making it the world’s most expensive dress.

Fans and collectors of Monroe will have another chance of owning costumes worn by the late actress, priced between $150,000 and $300,000 at the Debbie Reynolds Collection Part II auction.

Monroe’s provocatively sexy costumes were known for pushing the barrier set by strict film censorship codes. The December auction will feature Monroe’s saucy showgirl leotard from the Oscar-nominated 1956 film “Bus Stop,” designed by William Travilla, auctioneers Profile in History said on Tuesday.

The screen legend’s gowns from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” the 1953 thriller “Niagara,” and the 1960 Oscar-nominated comedy “Let’s Make Love,” will also be up for auction.

Reynolds, 79, began amassing the impressive collection when she was a young actress under contract at MGM. When the studio auctioned off everything except its real estate in 1970, she turned a pastime into what she called an “obsession.”

But her dream of displaying her beloved costumes in a museum was dashed several times and she was forced to sell them to pay back creditors.

Monroe’s four costumes will be auctioned in Beverly Hills as part of the Debbie Reynolds Collection Part II on December 3.

Article Source: reuters.com

It marks one of the most iconic moments emblazoned in cinema history – Marilyn Monroe bashfully holding her dress down as a gust of wind billows the fabric around her, exposing her enviable legs.

It is a moment so well-remembered, officials in Chicago, Illinois have made the misguided decision to erect a scaled 26ft model of Ms Monroe in tribute – according to a new survey.

The statue, under which passers-by can freely gaze up the screen siren’s skirt, has ranked number one on Virtual Tourist’s top ten list of worst public art.

‘Forever Marilyn’, by Seward Johnson, was erected in July near the city’s Tribune Tower.

And the stainless steel and aluminium sculpture, which weighs a whopping 34,000lbs, has raised more than a few eyebrows.

Not least because visitors to the plaza are at once confronted with Monroe’s pert bottom in gleaming white panties and her perfect pins bedecked in white, open-toe kitten heels.

Detractors have found so many things to criticize about this work that it’s hard to know where to start: its 26ft scale; its impropriety given that the movie to which it pays tribute – 1955′s The Seven Year Itch – is set in New York; and its perceived crudeness given that viewers are able to look directly up her dress.

Abraham Ritchie wrote on Art Chicago Blog after the unveiling the statue was a ‘creepy schlock from a fifth-rate sculptor that blights a first-rate public art collection.’

Article Source: dailymail.co.uk

The protectors of Marilyn Monroe’s image say a collector who wants $500,000 for a short 1940s stag film is committing fraud and violating the actress’s intellectual property rights by claiming it shows her having sex when she was underage.

Mikel Barsa, a Spanish events promoter, insists that the scratchy, black-and-white six-minute film shows the young actress, known then as Norma Jeane Baker, around 1946 or 1947 when she was poor and desperate to break into show business.

Experts on Monroe’s life, however, say it’s highly unlikely that the smiling young blonde in the film is her. Comparing the film with known Monroe images leaves ample room for doubt. Also, while Barsa shows off various documents he says support his theory, they self-evidently fall short of proof.

Whoever the woman in the film may have been, even alleging that it shows Monroe violates her intellectual property rights and will cost Barsa dearly if he goes ahead with the sale, said Nancy Carlson, a spokeswoman for the brand development and licensing company Authentic Brands Group.

Barsa is inviting legal action for “perpetrating a fraud on the public, violating the Monroe estate’s exclusive rights to her image and other claims of intellectual property infringement,” Carlson said in an interview.

Barsa said he’ll broker the sale on Sunday evening anyway and collect his 10 percent from the film’s owners, whom he refused to identify.

“It always is the same story when it comes to Marilyn — to deny, deny, deny and to threaten,” Barsa said.

Barsa claims the 8 mm strip of celluloid was made simultaneously with a 16 mm version, which he claims he sold for $1.2 million in 1997. He refuses to identify any of the sellers or buyers of the films, but said a European magazine also bought rights to make copies and later sold 600,000 videotapes promoted as documenting Monroe’s secret sex life. Copies of the tape can still be found online.

Barsa offers a 1996 letter from Alan Brown of the nonprofit American Film Institute that he say confirms the woman is Monroe. But the letter says only that “it’s not clear whether the woman in the film is Marilyn Monroe — if not, she’s definitely a lookalike.” A spokesman for the American Film Institute declined to comment again on the controversy.

Barsa also shared a copy of what he said was a declassified FBI document proving Monroe was in the film. The heavily redacted text, however, refers to thirdhand information from a source who claimed Monroe’s ex-husband, baseball great Joe DiMaggio, offered $25,000 in 1965 for a film that someone else claimed showed Monroe having sex. The document itself doesn’t say if the alleged film existed.

Barsa said he guesses the film was made in the months before Monroe signed on with movie studio 20th Century Fox in 1947.

“Marilyn had no motivation at all to make a porn movie,” countered Michelle Morgan, who wrote “Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed.”

“Her friends all agree that she never, ever showed any signs of having earned money in any other way than modeling or working as a real actress,” Morgan said.

Monroe “wasn’t a prude,” said Lois Banner, who wrote “MM-Personal: From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe.” But Banner also considers it extremely doubtful that financial difficulties would have put her in such a spot. Even at her poorest, in 1947, Monroe had a wealthy couple helping out by providing her with $100 a week, she said.

“She had a very purple sex life at times. But she never made any money being a party girl. She did it to advance her career,” Banner said.

And Scott Fortner, a Monroe fan who maintains a blog about her and collects the star’s clothing, has sent the AP a series of pictures pointing out differences between the star and the woman in the film, from her teeth to her chin to her ears. Some show that while Monroe had a prominent widow’s peak, the hairline of the woman in the sex tape seems straight.

Monroe underwent plastic surgery in 1950 to change her nose and chin, but her widow’s peak never changed, Fortner said.

“To me personally, it doesn’t even resemble her,” Carlson said.

Article Source: yahoo.com