Perhaps no actor has been so thoroughly consumed by their own image as Marilyn Monroe. More than 60 years after her death, her iconography remains instantly recognizable, even to people who have never seen a single one of her films: the half-smile, the platinum curls, the billowing white halter dress. \u201cA student once said to me, \u2018I\u2019m so surprised to find out that Marilyn Monroe was an actress,\u2019\u201d author, film historian, and Brooklyn College film professor Foster Hirsch tells Vogue<\/em>. \u201c\u2018I thought she was just famous.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But appraising Monroe on screen (she appeared in some 30 films in the 15 years before her untimely death) reveals something more surprising\u2014not merely a movie star but a deeply skilled performer with impeccable comic timing, emotional intelligence, and a gift for making even the most carefully manufactured image feel spontaneous.<\/p>\n Yet these talents weren\u2019t well recognized even in her lifetime, Hirsch notes. \u201cMany thought you went to see a Marilyn Monroe film just to bask in that beauty or because she was a film star. And did it require acting skills? Of course it did! She had an instinctive sense of what the camera needed to register an impact. But I don\u2019t think she was given a lot of credit for that, even among critics.\u201d<\/p>\n
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