Marilyn Monroe

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles in 1926, she spent a difficult childhood in foster homes and an orphanage before being discovered as a model while working in a munitions factory during the Second World War. Signed by Twentieth Century-Fox, she took the name Marilyn Monroe and worked steadily in small roles until breakthrough parts in 1950 brought her to Hollywood's attention.

Through the 1950s Monroe became the world's most famous movie star, headlining Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, and The Seven Year Itch. Determined to be taken seriously as an artist, she studied at the Actors Studio and founded her own production company in 1955, a bold move for an actress of her era. Her performance in Some Like It Hot won her a Golden Globe.

Monroe struggled privately with insecurity and ill health even as her fame grew, and she died at her Los Angeles home in August 1962 at thirty-six, from an overdose of barbiturates. In the decades since, she has become perhaps cinema's most recognizable icon, studied as an actress, a businesswoman ahead of her time, and a symbol of both Hollywood's glamour and its costs.