, it drills into its protagonist’s subconscious and into the psyche of the City of Angels, digging beneath the chromed convertibles and plush leather booths to reveal a nightmarish underworld of reptilian moguls, carnivorous press and vampiric doctors all too generous with their prescriptions. “A place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul,” as Monroe herself once said.
So I had to know what she was thinking and feeling every time. Because the way she rounded her lips for the ‘O’s, or how much of her lower teeth she would show, what her eyebrows were doing, all these expressions were a consequence of Marilyn in survival mode. They were tricks that she was pulling in desperate circumstances.”
This year, a DNA test of a strand of Monroe’s hair indicated her father was Charles Stanley Gifford, her mother’s colleague at Consolidated Film Industries in Los Angeles. But during Monroe’s lifetime he was a blank space that bequeathed her a bottomless well of unfulfilled need. At first, de Armas struggled with Monroe’s inability to set boundaries between herself and others, finding her own instincts racing in the opposite direction. “In some early scenes I played it way too strong,” she says.
“And absolutely, I agree with her,” de Armas nods. “Inspiration is a very different thing from taking. If there’s a reason she’s still not resting, it’s that she’s been taken from so much. I knew as soon as I met Andrew that he was going to take care of her. I was thinking of her so much, some days I would go home and have dinner and as I was washing the dishes I would just start sobbing, crying and crying, because I had this terrible feeling – I knew I couldn’t fix it.”
“Acting is my passion and what makes me happy, but it’s not who I am. That’s one of the reasons I left LA. I want to go there, see my friends, see my industry, but it’s not my life” – Ana de Armas
Thank you to Ana de Armas. I thought she was brilliant portraying Marilyn Monroe.
Hell, no.
NO moar monroach anythings PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GAWD
Super star status on her way. Hollywood divorce always been mess . Elisabeth Taylor
😍
“The whole [acting] process was overwhelming for me. Most of the time I thought I was doing it wrong. I was thinking, what are these American actors thinking of me?” – Ana de Armas Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford