In her new film, actress Michelle Williams takes on perhaps her biggest role yet by channeling one of the most famous women in Hollywood: iconic starlet and bombshell, Marilyn Monroe.
“My Week with Marilyn” is based on a true story from the summer of 1956. Colin Clark, an assistant from the set of Monroe’s film, “The Prince and the Showgirl,” spent a week with the Hollywood starlet and showed her around England far away from the “camera and lights” that she was accustomed to. The events in the film are an adaptation from Clark’s diary entries and his week of adventures with Monroe when her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, left England.
Scarlett Johansson, Kate Hudson and Amy Adams were considered for the role but in the end Williams went into talks with the director, Simon Curtis, and was cast for the part.
“I just feel so lucky – I never thought I would wind up here, playing Marilyn,” Williams told FOX411’s Pop Tarts at the movie’s Los Angeles premiere.
The resemblance between Monroe and Williams is almost uncanny, with the same blonde bouncy hair, light skin color and even body shape. Once on screen, makeup and wardrobe made the transformation complete.
Michelle Williams - Marilyn Monroe. Photo Credit: Annie Leibovitz
Williams spent six months “educating” herself with all things Marilyn Monroe. She listened to recordings, read biographies, diaries, letters, looked over dozens of photographs and YouTube clips of the Monroe and watched her movies, according to a Vogue interview with the actress.
She learned how Monroe talked, held up her head and the starlet’s strut and hip-swaying style of walking. Producer and Co-Head of The Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein, told The Huffington Post that Williams also walked around balancing books on her head.
“It is magnetic to watch the actress move seamlessly between the many faces of Monroe, the movie star she became, the wounded girl she was growing up,” said The Los Angeles Times. “It’s hard to imagine a more unforgettable Monroe than the one Williams has given us- except for the original, of course.”
The film premiered at the New York Film Festival in October and opened in theatres around the U.S. on Nov. 23, Thanksgiving Day.
So far, most reviews for “My Week with Marilyn” have been positive and the buzz around the film might be just what Williams needs to get her her third Oscar nomination.
Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. Photo Credit: Annie Leibovitz
