Now That’s Bold: Michelle Williams takes on Marilyn Monroe

Michelle Williams Left, Monroe Right

That’s BOLD- Check out Michelle Williams as the one and only Marilyn Monroe on the cover of Vogue.

It’s pretty clear the Oscar-nominated ingenue put a lot of hard work into her transformation into the blonde bombshell for the upcoming drama “My Week With Marilyn.” Work that the Dawson’s Creek star said made her feel “like being reborn.”

“I’d go to bed every night with a stack of books next to me,” she told Vogue in an interview for its October issue. “And I’d fall asleep to movies of her. It was like when you were a kid and you’d put a book under your pillow hoping you’d get it by osmosis.”

As for achieving Marilyn’s famously curvy body, Michelle said her attempts at weight gain only showed in her face so she actually had to pad her hips to get the look.

Monroe’s a tough act to follow. While Williams isn’t the perfect face and body match (and who is?) for the film legend, the actress has clearly put a lot of effort into achieving the ’50s icon’s glamour and a soulful expression hinting at Marilyn’s vulnerabilty — vulnerability that Williams experienced firsthand when she first “suited up” as Monroe.

“There were three or four men gathered around a truck, and I remember seeing that they were watching me come and feeling that they were watching me go — and for the first time I glimpsed some idea of the pleasure I could take in that kind of attention; not their pleasure but my pleasure,” Williams explained to Vogue. And I thought, Oh, maybe Marilyn felt that when she walked down the beach.”