I've been offline quite a lot this past week so perhaps this is old news but last night I read a rumor that Scarlett Johansson might be offered the part of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn. That's a future film based on a posthumously published diary by Colin Clark. He was under Sir Laurence Olivier's employ during the shoot of The Prince and the Showgirl when Marilyn was 30 and Olivier 50.I love showbiz movies but I often wish that telefilms & movies would leave Marilyn alone. Better that Hollywood promoted Marilyn's actual work (still undervalued) than continually reanimating the corpse of her celebrity.
As for the possible Marilyns, Scarlett still hasn't really proven herself a viable box office commodity but she's held on to the #1 most-sought-after-young-actress title anyway. And for a surprising number of years now. That said, if we must see Marilyn revived again, I'd rather see Michelle Williams (also in the running) have a go at it. Cup size aside, I think Michelle looks more like Marilyn and she's turned into a more interesting actress, too.
A teensy sampling of "Marilyns" in the past 25 years [clockwisefrom left]: Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd in Norma Jean & Marilyn
(1996), Theresa Russell in Insignificance (1985), Sally Kirkland in The
Island (1998) and Samantha Morton in Mister Lonely (2007)
Still the list of actresses that have played Marilyn is crazy long. How exactly would any actress really distinguish herself in the role at this point? My natural orientation leans heavily towards actresses, but in this particular case I'm a lot more curious as to which 40-50something male star would risk taking on OLIVIER (capitals intended). That's not an actor-on-actor challenge you see so often.
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