Long before Blonde hit Netflix screens this week, the polarizing Marilyn Monroe biopic was surrounded by controversy. Chatter around the film—directed by Australian auteur Andrew Dominik and starring Ana de Armas—first began to pick up in January, when it received a rare NC-17 rating for its graphic depictions of sexual abuse and abortion. The conversations continued after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, and the sharply divided critical response that accompanied it. Why, many have asked, does the film focus solely on the toxic and often abusive relationships Monroe had with the men in her life, and not her female friendships or glittering film career? Were the extremely graphic rape scenes really necessary to tell Monroe’s story? And, perhaps the most fundamental question of all: Is Dominik’s take on Monroe’s life misogynistic?
You can make up your own mind about that, as viewers already have after watching the film this week. But if there’s one thing everyone can agree on about Blonde, it’s that it has an impressively stacked cast—and that de Armas’s performance as Monroe is a knockout. Also making appearances are Bobby Cannavale as “the ex-athlete,” a stand-in for Monroe’s second husband, baseball star Joe DiMaggio, and Adrien Brody as a character named “the playwright,” widely acknowledged to be Monroe’s third husband, Arthur Miller.
Here, see the Blonde cast side-by-side with the real-life figures from history they played.
Norma Jeane (Marilyn Monroe): Ana de Armas
Photos: Getty Images
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