First Image Surfaces Of Michelle Williams As Marilyn Monroe

Check out the first image of Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe!

The Weinstein Company has released this photo to mark the beginning of principal photography on “My Week with Marilyn,” which will film for seven weeks at Pinewood Studios and on location in and around London. Michelle Williams plays the iconic Marilyn Monroe alongside a fantastic British cast including Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Dominic Cooper, Emma Watson and Julia Ormond.

The film chronicles a week in the life of Marilyn Monroe in which she escapes the shackles of her Hollywood career and embraces British life with Colin Clark. Directed by Simon Curtis and produced by David Parfitt, the film is based on Colin Clark’s diaries and has been adapted for the screen by Adrian Hodges.

In the early summer of 1956, 23-year-old Colin Clark, just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of “The Prince and the Showgirl,” the film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller.

Nearly 40 years on, his diary account “The Prince, the Showgirl and Me” was published, but one week was missing, and this was published some years later as “My Week with Marilyn.” This is the story of that week. When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life: an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.

Marilyn Monroe is played by the Academy Award-nominated Michelle Williams (the soon to be released “Blue Valentine,” “Shutter Island,” “Brokeback Mountain”), and Tony Award-winning Eddie Redmayne (“The Other Boleyn Girl,” “The Good Shepherd”) stars as Colin Clark. Kenneth Branagh (director of upcoming “Thor,” “Wallander”) plays Sir Laurence Olivier, with Judi Dench (“Quantum of Solace”) as Dame Sybil Thorndike. They are joined by the very best of British acting talent including Julia Ormond (“Temple Grandin,” “Che,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) as Vivien Leigh, Dougray Scott (“Mission Impossible II”) as Arthur Miller, Zoe Wanamaker (“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”), Emma Watson (“Harry Potter” series), Toby Jones (“Frost Nixon”, “Infamous”), Philip Jackson (“Little Voice”), Geraldine Somerville (“Harry Potter”), Derek Jacobi (“Gosford Park”), Simon Russell Beale (“An Ideal Husband”) and Dominic Cooper (“Tamara Drewe”, “An Education”, “Mamma Mia”).

The film is produced by Trademark Films and is financed and distributed by The Weinstein Company. BBC Films and Lipsync Productions are also financing the picture. It was developed in association with the UK Film Council and BBC Films.