- The story of American actress Marilyn Monroe, covering her love and professional lives.
- From director Andrew Dominik, and based on the bestselling novel by Joyce Carol Oates, 'Blonde' boldly reimagines the life of one of Hollywood's most enduring icons, Marilyn Monroe. From her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements, 'Blonde' blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves.—Netflix
- Norma Jeane has an unhappy childhood with a mentally challenged abusive mother. As an adult her misery continues when she enters the big bad world of Hollywood where she is sexually exploited at every stage. Her dream of motherhood and a settled domestic life remains unfulfilled and she gets addicted to drugs. Her life goes into a downward spiral from where she does not recover.
- Before becoming Marilyn Monroe and one of the greatest female pop culture icons of the 20th century, Norma Jeane suffered emotional and physical abuse from her unhappy, mentally unbalanced mother, Gladys Baker. Defined by a traumatic childhood and the deafening absence of a father figure, Norma Jeane transforms into dazzling Marilyn Monroe and tries to break into Hollywood's film industry. Instead, she receives abuse from all angles. And with people taking advantage of her, including husbands Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, more and more, Marilyn Monroe finds herself split between her glamorous public persona and her maltreated private self. It is bitter, unkind reality that crushes Marilyn Monroe's confidence in herself, causing her to become increasingly dependent on drugs, more insecure, and more convinced that her dream of starting a family will never come true.—Nick Riganas
- As a young girl, Norma Jeane Mortenson grows up raised by her mentally unstable mother Gladys. On her seventh birthday in 1933, she is given a framed picture of a man Gladys claims is her father. Later that night, a fire breaks out in the Hollywood Hills, and Gladys drives Norma Jeane up there, claiming that her father lives there, but is forced to go back home at the orders of the police. An enraged Gladys tries to drown Norma Jeane in the bathtub when she asks about her father but lets her go. Norma Jeane escapes to the house of her neighbor, Miss Flynn, who promises she will be fine. A few days later, Norma Jeane is sent to an orphanage while Gladys is admitted to a mental hospital, having been declared unfit to raise a child.
In the 1940s, Norma Jeane becomes a pin-up girl under the stage name of "Marilyn Monroe", appearing on magazine covers and calendars. While trying to break into the acting industry, she is raped by film studio president Mr. Z. In 1951, she auditions for the role of Nell in Don't Bother to Knock. The audition goes poorly after she breaks down and leaves in tears, but she impresses the casting director enough to give her the part. As her acting career steadily rises, she meets Charles "Cass" Chaplin Jr. and Edward G. "Eddy" Robinson Jr., with whom she begins a polyamorous relationship. Norma Jeane lands her breakout role in 1953 with Niagara, but after she is spotted in public with Cass and Eddy, she is told by her agent to limit her appearances with them in public, which upsets her because she feels that her persona of Marilyn is just a role and not her true self.
Norma Jeane becomes pregnant with Cass' child, much to her delight, but eventually decides to have an abortion out of fear that the child might inherit Gladys' mental issues. Cass supports her decision. On the day of the appointment, she changes her mind, but it is too late. Following the abortion, she breaks things off with Cass and Eddy. She later meets Joe DiMaggio, a retired athlete who sympathizes with her when she expresses her desire to leave Hollywood and become a more serious actress in New York City. As she films Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she receives a letter from a man claiming to be her father. Norma Jeane feels disconnected from her onscreen performance at the film's premiere, saying it is not her. She returns to her hotel room, having been told that someone is waiting for her. Expecting it to be her father, she instead finds Joe, who asks to marry her, which she accepts reluctantly.
Norma Jeane and Joe's marriage sours when Cass and Eddy give Joe some nude publicity pictures of her, which enrages Joe so much that he hits her and demands that she refuse to do The Seven Year Itch out of principle. However, she still goes through with filming, doing the famous publicity stunt with the white dress. When she gets home, a drunken Joe screams and gets physically violent with her. She divorces him shortly after.
In 1955, Norma Jeane auditions for the Broadway play Magda, written by renowned playwright Arthur Miller. During a read-through, her performance impresses everyone but Arthur. He eventually warms up to her when she gives him some insightful character analysis. Norma Jeane and Arthur marry and move to Maine, where she lives a happy life with him and becomes pregnant. However, when walking on the beach one day with a platter of food, she trips and miscarries. Distraught, she returns to acting soon after.
While filming Some Like It Hot, Norma Jeane becomes more uncontrollable and mentally disturbed. She is overwhelmed by the constant press attention, feels that she is becoming a joke, has frequent outbursts on set, especially toward director Billy Wilder, and grows increasingly distant from Arthur. To cope with her stress, she begins taking pills.
By 1962, she has become dependent on drugs and alcohol. Secret Service agents pick up an intoxicated Norma Jeane and take her to a hotel to meet the president, who forces her to fellate him, before raping her, and then has her taken away after she vomits in his bed. Already dazed and drugged on pills, she begins to wonder if this is what being 'Marilyn Monroe' has led to, and she also hallucinates having another abortion before being sent back to her home in Los Angeles. She learns from Eddy on the phone that Cass has died and has left something to her, which she refuses to see at first but is convinced by Eddy, who sends it in a package in the mail. Cass' memento turns out to be the stuffed tiger plush that she found when the three of them were together, and the package also contains a letter where he confesses that the letters that Norma Jeane has been receiving, supposedly from her father, were actually written by him.
Shattered by the revelation, Norma Jeane overdoses on barbiturates; as she dies on her bed, she has a vision of her father welcoming her to the afterlife.
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