Becoming Marilyn Monroe Takes More Than You Think
It is almost uncanny how much the petite Michelle Williams looks like the curvyMarilyn Monroe in the upcoming film My Week With Marilyn. That pout, those locks and the perfectly placed beauty mark… how did they do it? We all know that Williams’ transformation into Marilyn was a lot more than aesthetic, but we also know that no look would have been completed without those perfectly bleached locks, so we did some digging to find out what it took to become Marilyn.
Before Williams took the part she told The Hollywood Reporter she worried about thefeasibility of transforming her look into Marilyn. “There were certain unbridgeable gaps,” she said.”I couldn’t re-arrange my face and body to look like hers.” But as always the magic of makeup never fails to exceed our expectations.
Williams flew to London to meet with makeup artist Jenny Shircore.
“We spent half a day just standing in front of a mirror,” Williams said. “We weren’t trying to reconfigure my face. We were trying to add, you know, the curve of the lip, an eyeliner. It began a long process.”
A long process that didn’t end with an arched eyebrow. To recreate Williams’ portrayal of the famous actress on the October cover of Vogue, hairstylist Oribe said it took a lot more than bleached hair to create the star.
“The key thing to remember is that you can’t reinventMarilyn, you have to recreate an exaggerated, almost cartoon-like version of her,” Oribe said. “Her look is classic, it’s not about reinvention, or else it becomes something else entirely.”
