Product Description
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My Week With Marilyn stars an award-winning all-star cast and
based on the diaries of Colin Clark, the film captures a love
affair with the world s most famous woman, Marilyn Monroe.
Academy Award® nominee Michelle Williams stars as Marilyn Monroe
(Blue Valentine, Shutter Island, Brokeback ain) and is
joined by a stellar cast including Eddie Redmayne as Colin Clark
(The Other Boleyn Girl, The Good Shepherd), Kenneth Branagh as
Sir Laurence Olivier (Thor, Wallander), Dame Judi Dench as Dame
Sybil Thorndike (Quantum of Solace), Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh
(Che, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Dougray Scott as
Arthur Miller (Mission Impossible II), Zoe Wanamaker as Paula
Strasberg (Harry Potter and the Philosopher s Stone), Emma Watson
(Harry Potter), Dominic Cooper (Tamara Drewe, An Education, Mamma
Mia), Derek Jacobi (Gosford Park), Toby Jones (Frost Nixon,
Infamous), Miranda Raison (Spooks), Philip Jackson (Little
Voice), Geraldine Somerville (Harry Potter) and Michael Kitchen
(Foyle s War).
My Week With Marilyn is the true story of a star-struck boy who
falls in love with the biggest celebrity in the world, Marilyn
Monroe.
23 year-old Colin Clark was determined to break into the film
business and his first job was The Prince and The Showgirl - the
film that was set to be the smash hit of the year famously
uniting the biggest stars of the day, Marilyn Monroe and Sir
Laurence Olivier. On honeymoon in Britain with her new husband,
Arthur Miller, Marilyn is excited about the project but quickly
becomes desperate to run away from her Hollywood entourage, the
pressures of work and the press who hound her. For Marilyn, Colin
is a welcome antidote and he offers her everything she craves
when, together, they escape the film set to get closer in an
idyllic Britain.
Simon Curtis director credits include the BAFTA and Emmy-winning,
Cranford, the International Emmy-winning, A Short Stay in
Switzerland, and the Golden Globe nominated Five Days. The film
is produced by Academy Award® and BAFTA winner David Parfitt
(Shakespeare in Love, The Madness of King George, I Capture the
Castle) and the screenplay is by Adrian Hodges (Tom and Viv, The
Ruby in the Smoke and David Copperfield). The film is produced by
Trademark Films and is financed by The Weinstein Company. BBC
Films and Lipsync Productions also financed the picture. It was
developed in association with the UK Film Council and BBC Films.
Special Features
* The Untold Story of an American Icon
* Director's Commentary
.co.uk Review
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Anyone doubting the layered, nuanced, and heartbreaking acting
abilities of Michelle Williams will find My Week with Marilyn a
tremendous revelation. And Williams fans will enjoy it even more.
In My Week with Marilyn Williams takes on the formidable
challenge of playing Marilyn Monroe, and does so with depth and
assuredness, and without resorting to caricature. Williams's
Marilyn commands the screen with pain and delicacy, and doesn't
let go until the final credits. My Week with Marilyn focuses on a
small time frame in Monroe's life, right after her marriage to
Arthur Miller. Monroe, already "the world's most famous woman,"
still feels the need for validation as an actress. What better
way to achieve that, she believes, than committing to costarring
with Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl, a film she
firmly believed would finally cement her reputation as a serious
actress. My Week with Marilyn is based on the short memoir of
Colin Clark, a crew member on The Prince and the Showgirl, who
quickly became the confidant of the wildly insecure Monroe and
watched a train wreck of egos--mostly Olivier's and
Monroe's--collide in a fiery near-disaster. Kenneth Branagh gives
an uncharacteristically restrained performance as the exasperated
Olivier, resentful of the "new blood" in Hollywood that the young
Monroe represents, and disdainful of her cult-like devotion to
Method acting. (And of Monroe's chronic tardiness, which
threatens to undermine the veddy, veddy strict British work
schedule.) Eddie Redmayne plays Clark with a sweet, gentle
veneer, someone who grows to care genuinely about the complex
Monroe. Julia Ormond is clipped and proper as Olivier's
then-wife, Vivien Leigh, and Emma Watson shows a lovely gravitas
as Lucy, Monroe's acting coach. But it's Williams who gives the
revelatory performance, capturing with painful intensity the
insecurity that begins to seep out of Monroe like a fearful
sweat. "Excuse my horrible face," she blurts out, while looking
nothing less than her usual radiant self. Where does this tragic
insecurity come from? My Week with Marilyn doesn't attempt to
answer the unanswerable, but instead shines a light on the very
real woman who became lost in the giant shadow of legend. --A.T.
Hurley
