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(Left to right) Susan Griffiths in "Marilyn and Me," Ana de Armas in "Blonde" and Michelle Williams in "My Week With Marilyn."
Courtesy Everett Collection; Netflix; Laurence Cendrowicz/The Weinstein Company/Courtesy Everett Collection
The Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde is in limited American theaters and streams on Netflix starting Sept. 28. Based on the Pulitzer Prize finalist novel by Joyce Carol Oates, the film stars Cuba’s Ana de Armas as the legendary Hollywood bombshell.
Biopics sometimes have a reputation for being cookie-cutter, but this one is purported to be a rather controversial, even experimental, retelling of the actress’s life: The movie received a rare NC-17 rating, and director Andrew Dominik said the script contains “very little dialogue” and should be thought of more as an “avalanche of images and events.” De Armas is far from the first actress to don Monroe’s signature platinum curls for a role, so we’ve compiled a watch list of other screen Marilyns to see if the Knives Out star is more bomb or bombshell.
Don’t miss this: 17 Entertaining Biopic Movies to Watch Now
Insignificance (1985)
The Marilyn: Theresa Russell
The premise: The Man Who Fell to Earth director Nicolas Roeg cast his then-wife Theresa Russell, now 65, as the Actress in this alternate reality film, which imagines four 1950s icons converging in a hotel room in New York City: the Actress, the Professor aka Albert Einstein (Michael Emil), The Ballplayer aka Joe DiMaggio (Gary Busey, 78) and the Senator aka Joseph McCarthy (Tony Curtis). The film is based on a play by Terry Johnson, who came up with the idea when he learned that an autographed picture of Einstein had been found among Marilyn’s possessions upon her death.
How did she do?: “She doesn't really look very much like Monroe,” wrote Roger Ebert, “but what does it matter? The blond hair and the red lips are there, and so is the manner, which has been imitated so often, and so badly, that the imitators prove that Monroe was a special case. Russell doesn’t imitate. She builds her performance from the ground up, and it works to hold the movie together.”
Watch it: Insignificance on the Criterion Channel
Marilyn and Me (1991)
The Marilyn: Susan Griffiths
The premise: A professional Marilyn impersonator, Griffiths, 62, has played the star on-screen more than a dozen times, in everything from Pulp Fiction to Growing Pains to Curb Your Enthusiasm. She had her most substantial role to date in this 1991 film, which is told from the point of view of Bob Slatzer (Jesse Dabson, now 60), who claimed to have fallen in love with and married Marilyn in 1952 before she hit it big. There’s little proof the marriage ever happened, although he wrote two books about the supposed secret affair. Needless to say, this film isn’t known for its historical accuracy…
How did she do?: The film review website The Biopic Story calls her performance “a top-notch impersonation,” even though it awarded the film just one out of four stars.
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