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As well as a successful music career, Madonna has acted in hit
Hollywood movies and won a Golden Globe award for her role
in
Evita
. She has also appeared on stage in London’s West End
and published children’s books.
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson
in Los Angeles in 1926. Her career as an actress and
singer made her an icon of the twentieth century.
Her trademark look helped her become one of
Hollywood’s most famous actresses. She was known for
her beautiful face and she had a birthmark on her cheek
that young girls painted on their faces to look like her.
Monroe was under a lot of pressure from the media and her
fans. Despite her fame and fortune, she seems to have had some
difficulties in her life. She committed suicide in 1962.
Marilyn Monroe had a poor childhood and grew up in foster
homes and orphanages. She married at 16 to escape life in
government care, but divorced four years later. In 1946, she
joined a modelling agency and took singing and acting lessons.
She changed her name to Marilyn Monroe and spent seven
years acting in films and modelling.
In 1953 she got the opportunity to be in the film
Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes
, in which she performed ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s
Best Friend’. After that performance she became a Hollywood
superstar, famous for her acting and singing, but also for her
good looks. She won the Golden Globe Award in 1959 for
Some
Like It Hot
. She married twice, first to the great baseball player
Joe Di Maggio and then to playwright Arthur Miller. Monroe’s
looks and personality have inspired generations of performers
since her death.
