Movie Moment: 'My Week with Marilyn'

In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark, a movie enthusiast worked as an assistant on the set of 'The Prince and the Showgirl', the film that famously, and turbulently, united Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. Olivier had hoped this collaboration would help him become a Hollywood movie star, and Marilyn hoped to become taken seriously as an actress.

An insight into a vanished era of filmmaking and the clash that ensued between the two actors was well documented nearly 40 years later in Colin’s diary account, ‘The Prince, the Showgirl and Me,’ but its author purposefully omitted one week’s production... This missing chapter was eventually published some years later as ‘My Week with Marilyn,’ and this film chronicles Colin's life changing week and near affair with the star.

Released on November 25th, the film stars Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Julia Ormond and Emma Watson - but its main attraction is undeniably Michelle Williams, who according to Vogue ‘brings Monroe to life with heartbreaking delicacy and precision without resorting to impersonation or cliché.’

Below: The trailer for 'My Week with Marilyn'

Michelle spent six months immersing herself in all things Marilyn Monroe; reading biographies, diaries, letters, poems, and notes, studying photographs, listening to recordings and watching her movies. Michelle also trained hard to transform her usually gamine body to achieve that infamous Marilyn wiggle...

Below: The original trailer for 'The Prince and The Showgirl'

Annie Leibovitz shot a stunning set of Marilyn Monroe inspired photographs of Oscar-nominee Michelle Williams for the October issue of US Vogue.

Styled by Tonne Goodman, Michelle wore a retro wardrobe from Donna Karan, Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren and J. Crew.

The actress revealed, “as soon as I finished the script, I knew that I wanted to do it, and then I spent six months trying to talk myself out of it... But I always knew that I never really had a choice... I’ve started to believe that you get the piece of material that you were ready for.”

“I wish that I could play her for the rest of my life...”

The First Actresses - Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons

I recently went to see ‘The First Actresses - Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons’ at The National Portrait Gallery, where more than 50 portraits of actresses take centre stage in a vivid spectacle of femininity, fashion and theatricality in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Britain.

Women were first permitted to perform on the English stage in the early 1660’s, after the restoration of Charles II, and this exhibition reveals the many ways in which these notorious, glamorous performers became early celebrities and fashion icons, shrewdly using portraiture to enhance their reputations, deflect scandal and increase their popularity.

Portraits of everyone's favourite Restoration pin up girl, the ‘pretty witty’ Nell Gwyn (with her varying, revealing ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ on display - above, both by Simon Verelst) alongside Moll Davis, Kitty Clive, Hester Booth, Lavinia Fenton, Elizabeth Linley, Sarah Siddons, Mary Robinson and Dorothy Jordan are exhibited.

What makes this exhibition really fascinating is the focus on the social history of the time and the biographies of the ladies which really does keep your interest from the first painting through to the last. With some early actresses becoming mistresses of Kings and aristocrats and with Covent Garden being just as famous for its brothels as it was for its theatres, the struggle which these women were up against was profound and you really leave admiring these theatrical pioneers.

Touchingly, to complement this exhibition, in a nearby exhibition entitled ‘The Actress Now’ displays a cacophony of portraits featuring contemporary actresses, ranging from Dame Judi Dench to Helena Bonham Carter (left, by Trevor Leighton) and Keira Knightley, who all owe a great debt to their predecessors in the next-door room.

Exhibition on at The National Portrait Gallery
until 8 January 2012