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If there were any doubts that Michelle Williams would at least look like iconic blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe in the upcoming film My Week with Marilyn -- which chronicles Monroe's time filming 1957's The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier -- a new photo shoot in the pages of October's Vogue should wipe them away.
Photographed by Annie Liebovitz, Williams, 31, is seen in various Monroe-inspired poses, looking eerily like the legendary screen siren. But the transformation wasn't easy as pie... or eating pie.
Williams, who packed on 15 pounds for her Oscar-nominated role in Blue Valentine, says she tried to gain weight to play the famously voluptuous Monroe -- but could seem to put on the pounds in the proper place. "Ultimately, it went right to my face," she says of the weight she did gain. "So at some point it became a question of, Do I want my face to look like Marilyn Monroe's or my hips?"
Kenneth Branagh, who plays Sir Laurence Olivier in My Week With Marilyn, raves to Vogue about the full-on transformation Williams went through for the role. "I'd look over and there is Michelle. Half an hour later, Marilyn has arrived but is a bit sleepy," Branagh recalls. "Half an hour later, I look round and Marilyn is now very frisky. And finally, just before we're due to be called, Marilyn is fully there -- the dress is on, the hair is in place, there's a glint in the eye."
In the interview, Williams also speaks openly about rebuilding her life in the wake of the 2008 death of Heath Ledger, her onetime fiancé and the father of her 5-year-old daughter Matilda. "Three years ago, it felt like we didn't have anything, and now my life -- our life -- has kind of repaired itself," she says. "Look, it's not a perfectly operating system -- there are holes and dips and electrical storms -- but the basics are intact."
When asked how Ledger's death might have changed her, Williams says that it "changed how I see the world and how I interact on a daily basis. It's changed the parent I am. It's changed the friend I am. It's changed the kind of work that I really want to do. It's become the lens through which I see life -- that it's all impermanent.”
My Week With Marilyn opens on Nov. 4. While Ms. Monroe's shoes -- and bra -- will definitely be tough to fill, we look forward to seeing Michelle Williams go for it.
