
Knowing that her appearance worked both Please see the following: and against her (though mainly for), Marilyn Monroe wanted more than anything to be taken seriously as an actress.
“If I am a star, the people made me a star… but I do want to be wonderful, you know?” She was heard saying it in an audio recording. Another time she stated, “Whatever I want to achieve, I would love to be an actress. A true actress.” Artist with integrity.
Among the dozens of old interview clips included in the Netflix documentary, her Gentlemen Prefer Blondes co-star Jane Russell told journalist Anthony SummersThey would work together all day, and Monroe would have dinner with her acting coach in the evening. “She was very bright and she wanted to learn,” Russell said, “and was interested in everything to help her control her career.”
John Huston, who directed Monroe in one of her first films, 1950’s Asphalt Jungle, and her last finished movie, 1961’s The Misfits, recalled meeting the “very fresh, very attractive, rather timid, shy” young woman for the first time at her audition, where she “read her lines beautifully.”
Her appeal extended beyond her physical appearance, the filmmaker noted. Though she was the “sex symbol of this century,” he noted in the 1980s, “it wasn’t just a sex thing at all. It was the same for women and men. Marilyn was always deeply touching.”