Actors -  Marilyn Monroe

The most endlessly talked-about and mythologized figure in Hollywood history, Marilyn Monroe remains the ultimate superstar, her rise and fall the stuff that both dreams and nightmares are made of. Innocent, vulnerable, and impossibly alluring, she defined the very essence of screen sexuality. Rising from pin-up girl to international superstar, she was a gifted comedienne whom the camera adored, a luminous and incomparably magnetic screen presence. In short, she had it all, yet her career and life came crashing to a tragic halt, a Cinderella story gone horribly wrong; dead before her time -- her fragile beauty trapped in amber, impervious to the ravages of age -- Monroe endures as the movies' greatest and most beloved icon, a legend eclipsing all others.

Born Norma Jean Mortensen (later Baker) on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, she was seemingly destined for a life of tragedy: Her mother spent the majority of her life institutionalized, she was raised in an endless succession of orphanages and foster homes, and she was raped at the age of eight. By 1942, she was married to one Jim Dougherty, subsequently dropping out of school to work in an aircraft production plant; within a year she attempted suicide. When Dougherty entered the military, Baker bleached her hair and began modeling. By 1946, the year of the couple's divorce, she was accredited to a top agency, and her image regularly appeared in national publications. Her photos piqued the interest of the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who scheduled her for a screen test at RKO; however, 20th Century Fox beat him to the punch, and soon she was on their payroll at 125 dollars a week.

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