Just a short post here, Branagh on Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. (see all our BAFTA coverage including the full winners list and other interviews here).
What was it like for you to play such an iconic character against such an iconic character?
‘The big learning curve was just watching Michelle Williams transform into Marilyn Monroe. On the first day her coming on to set and watching every head turning, and you got this sense of what [The Marilyn Effect must have been], she walks on and just stops time. She walks on – well, she floats on, and everything stops. The thing that Marilyn – Michelle did, was to, not only recreate this icon, so she had the look and the voice and the sound and the hair and everything, but she also just kept making you feel that she was real, that she was believable in the here and now, so I found that great inspiration –to play the human being, not just the pictures and the legend as it were.’
‘It was fun every morning to go in and meet before going to the makeup trailer and be a little beaten up at five AM, and then you’d go in there and I’d wink at here, and I’d put my headphones on and listen to Lawrence Olivier reading the Bible, and then they’d put my prosthetic chin on and I’d turn around two or three hours later and Michelle had gone, she’d left the building. Instead Marilyn Monroe was there, seemed bigger in the chair, seemed as though there was a kind of aura around her. I felt that every day was a journey back in time, and I felt that I was getting a trip to the movies myself through seeing the magic she created.’
