Date: 1st November 2011

Michelle Williams: 'I studied Marilyn Monroe's voice'


Michelle Williams has said that she "studied tapes" to learn to speak like Marilyn Monroe.

The 31-year-old actress stars as the iconic sex symbol in the Harvey Weinstein film My Week with Marilyn.

The upcoming movie focuses on Monroe's first time in Britain to film The Prince and the Showgirl opposite Sir Laurence Olivier. She develops a friendship with an assistant on the set named Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne).

Williams said in an interview with Elle UK: "I studied tapes. There's really nothing that exists of her, that I could find anyway, that exists of her having a conversation with a friend.

"
So there wasn't a template that existed for her everyday vocal pattern, so at a certain point you have to make it imaginatively."

She also said that there were "
so many connections and parallels" between Monroe and her during the filming of the movie.

"
I was 30 when making the movie, the same age Marilyn was when she filmed The Prince and the Showgirl, the picture our film is based around," she said.

"
We filmed in the same studio at Pinewood where that movie was made. I had the same dressing room Marilyn had used and we also shot at the same house, Parkside, where she had stayed during filming."

Source: Press Release