My Week with Marilyn (2011) on Netflix
London, 1956. Colin Clark wins a place on the crew of Laurence Olivier's new film, which stars Marilyn Monroe. His first task is to find a house for her and her husband.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.9/1091,781 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
Colin Clark, twenty-three, graduates from Oxford and wants to work in movies rather than follow his family's academic path. He travels to London and waits at Laurence Olivier's office until the actor arrives with his wife, Vivien Leigh, who urges Olivier to hire him. Olivier is preparing The Sleeping Prince, later The Prince and the Showgirl, with Marilyn Monroe. Colin becomes third assistant director and is told to find a residence for Monroe and her husband, Arthur Miller. Monroe arrives at Heathrow with Miller, her coach Paula Strasberg and her business partner Milton H. Greene.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about My Week with Marilyn (2011)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Catherine Zeta-Jones was offered the part of Vivien Leigh and said no, because she did not want to be more than a week away from her husband, who was undergoing cancer treatment at the time. The producers auditioned again and cast Julia Ormond instead.
- Laurence Olivier was meant to be played by Ralph Fiennes. He had to withdraw in order to direct his own adaptation of Coriolanus, and Kenneth Branagh opened talks for the role in July 2010 before taking it.
- Director Simon Curtis shot on the very stage where Monroe made The Prince and the Showgirl in 1956, and Michelle Williams was put in the dressing room Monroe had used during that shoot.
- For Monroe's arrival in England, the crew turned White Waltham Airfield into London Heathrow of the 1950s, recreating the day she landed in the country to begin work on The Prince and the Showgirl.
- Michelle Williams was the only actress the producers ever met about the part, and director Simon Curtis said she was the only one he had gone after. She committed to the film two years before shooting began.
- Williams spent six months preparing before the camera turned, working through Monroe's biographies, diaries, letters, poems and notes, her photographs, films and recordings. She also gained weight for the part and worked with a choreographer to get the walk right.
- Costume designer Jill Taylor's white dress for the film-within-the-film was so intricate that no duplicate was made, so Williams had to wear that single dress for eleven days of shooting while Taylor worried something would happen to it.
- Make-up designer Jenny Shircore refused to reshape Michelle Williams's face with prosthetics, because the emotion in the performance had to come through. She built Monroe's very distinctive eyelids on Williams with light and shade instead, keeping three or four key points such as the eyebrows and the shape of the lips.
