Playing Marilyn Monroe a new kind of challenge for Michelle Williams

NEW YORK Any sane actress would be apprehensive about playing Marilyn Monroe, as Michelle Williams does in My Week With Marilyn. The icons shoes are awfully hard to step into and filling other garments is even more intimidating.

I miss those hips, Williams admits wistfully, referring to the padding that convincingly gave the waifish actress Monroes famous curves. She first tried gaining weight for the part, De Niro-style, but found the pounds went more to her face than her hips. It took low-tech movie magic, not Method acting, to fill out those glittering evening gowns.

Sitting in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, a cloud of Old Hollywood glamour lingers around the actress, even if, wearing a simple dress and boyish haircut, she herself has returned to Earth. (How old-school is the Waldorf? On the 39th floor, the windows still open.) Hotel staffers have left a photo for her, of Monroe at a 1957 gala in a Waldorf ballroom its one more reminder that, unlike previous roles she was able to create in private, this one belongs to the world.

The other characters Ive played, they exist in my imagination, she muses. There are ways to keep a connection with them, to never really have to say goodbye totally, but the world doesnt offer them up as often.

One assumes thats even true of a role Williams played for six years Jen Lindley, the Dawsons Creek character who made her famous. Williams has done a remarkably good job of segueing from TVs teen drama to being seen as one of her generations most serious film actresses earning Oscar nominations for Brokeback Mountain and Blue Valentine while forming relationships with indie auteurs like Wendy and Lucy director Kelly Reichardt.

But unanimous critical respect didnt keep her from suffering deep self-doubt on the set of this film, which chronicles the making of the Monroe/Laurence Olivier comedy The Prince and the Showgirl. (Kenneth Branagh plays Olivier.) Whether out of worry over her own performance or in subconscious emulation of Monroe who suffered crippling insecurities about her acting Williams says she continuously felt intimidated and more dependent on people than I have in the past.

I lived on peoples compliments, kind words, she says. An approving glance would last me days.

When complimented on the way she brought a couple of Monroes famous song-and-dance numbers to life, she responds with delight and convincing humility. Though her earliest experience as a child actor was in musical theater, Williams says flatly that shes not a singer or a dancer.

If the musical sequences were pretty daunting at first, though, they also offered a temporary respite from self-doubt. When youre singing and dancing, your head turns off. Your critical brain is not allowed any room. Because youre, you know, youre basically trying to do this she pats her head and rubs her stomach simultaneously, suggesting no room for other worries.

There was only one moment at which the actress was really able to accept the illusion of herself as Ma! rilyn Mo nroe. Photographer Brigitte Lacombe was on set (at Pinewood Studios near London), and visited Williams in her dressing room the same dressing room Monroe used while shooting Prince and the Showgirl.

She came and documented the entire [makeup] process, from me sitting down in the morning, going through the three-hour transformation, and then as Marilyn which was one of Marilyns very favorite things to do, to have her picture taken, because she got such confirmation of her existence and her beauty. And when I saw those photos, I thought she whispers now, as if marveling at a rare creature Oh, there she is! There she is!

Although Monroe loved being photographed, Williamss own real-world experience with photographers has been torturous. After the death of Heath Ledger, her onetime romantic partner and the father of her daughter, Williams was stalked by paparazzi. Asked whether her experience with media scrutiny prepared her at all for playing the worlds most-watched woman, she takes a long pause. She speaks about how, for a time, the relentless pursuit made her question whether acting was a career conducive to raising a child who was a good person, a happy person.

She says, surprisingly, that she didnt really consider the correlation between her lifes experiences and Monroes. But she suggests that having survived that period without abandoning acting may have left her willing to take on a big challenge. As modest as she is, Williams seems satisfied with the result.

If I had seen myself back in the early days when I was working on my Marilyn, she says, if I had seen how bad I probably was, I dont know if I would have been able to go forward.

But Williams compares her own learning process to her daughters lovely but awkward first stabs at making words of squiggles on paper. Its impo! rtant to allow yourself to make mistakes, and to not get too hung up on them. Its good to remember that the beginning of everything is ungainly and shouldnt be seen.

After all, sometimes those ungainly attempts at self-invention produce a Marilyn Monroe.

My Week With Marilyn

opened Wednesday at area theaters.