Exclusive: Your first look at Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in ‘Blonde’ has arrived, courtesy of VanityFairFR.
. The New Zealander, who splits his time between Los Angeles and Australia, likes to think before acting, so he preferred to answer my questions by e-mail. One of them was simple: “But why a movie about Marilyn?” His answer: “I saw an opportunity to describe an adult life through the lens of mistaken childhood beliefs & trauma.” This proves an interesting answer can emerge from a trivial question.
Let's start again: on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, the birth date of Norma Jeane Baker. The future star preferred that name to the one imposed on her by Ben Lyon, a 20th Century Fox producer certain that an alliterative “M” moniker would bring her luck. She was the unwanted child of a father whom we only know vanished into thin air before she was even born, and of Gladys Baker.
Norma spent most of her childhood shuttling between foster homes and orphanages. Gladys told her that her absent father was as handsome as Clark Gable, that he always had a picture of his beloved daughter in his wallet and that one day, surely, he would come to see her. We needn’t have listened to all twenty-seven of Lacan's seminars to understand that Norma Jeane , who called her husbands by the sweet nickname of “Daddy,” was in search of a protective father figure.