Why Marilyn Monroe remains a 'Hot' topic

There's something so haunting, so ethereal, so hip-swayingly seductive about Marilyn Monroe, the foster child born Norma Jeane Mortenson who died in 1962 as one of the world's most enigmatic, enduring stars.

Perhaps that's why a half-dozen or more TV actors, from Mira Sorvino (the 1996 TV movie Norma Jean & Marilyn) to Michelle Williams (2011's My Week with Marilyn) have tackled Marilyn. Kelli Garner will try to capture her allure in Lifetime's The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (Saturday and Sunday, 8 p.m. ET/PT). And Jessica Chastain will play Monroe in Blonde, an adaptation of the Joyce Carol Oates book due in theaters next year.

So how do you approach playing someone so celebrated? By shrinking her down to size.

"You start really big. I watched interviews. I watched everything," says Garner.

Secret Life deals with Monroe's humble beginnings as the child of a mentally unbalanced mother. She went on to become a model, morphed into an actress who melded raw sexuality with impeccable comedic timing and appeared in 1959's Some Like It Hot and 1955's The Seven Year Itch, and then became involved with President John. F. Kennedy, among other men, before dying of a probable overdose at age 36 in Los Angeles.

The new project is based on the book by J. Randy Taraborrelli, and marks the latest attempt to pull back the curtain on Monroe's off-screen life. She grappled with broken marriages, depression and an impossible level of fame.

"Her life is shrouded in myth. She's been interpreted in so many different art forms. How do you approximate her?" asks Ron Simon, curator at the Paley Center for Media. "There have been so many attempts to get it right. There's so many different dimensions to her."

Williams earned an Oscar nomination for portraying one period in Monroe's life — the time she went to England to shoot The Prince and the Showgirl. While there, she was bedridden with substance abuse. Garner portrays Monroe in her entirety, from her humble start and her ascent to stardom and her grim end.

Playing someone so iconic was no small feat, Garner notes. She says she studied hours of interviews, mimicking Monroe's breathy way of speaking, and her very specific posture: She always sat with her feet pointed and she stuck her tongue out when she was nervous.

"We didn't want to make a caricature. She was so communicative through body language. She knew how to draw attention to the right parts of herself," says Garner.

And the many portrayals of Monroe proved intimidating, which is why she didn't watch hours of footage.

"The only performance I'd seen was Michelle Williams', which was quite beautiful. I didn't want to see other actresses play her. The hardest part was waking up every day and convincing myself I could do it. It's very big shoes," says Garner.

Director Laurie Collyer's first order of business: making sure that her film wasn't merely a reproduction of who Monroe was.

"There had to be some mimicry. We integrated some of her physical tics," says Collyer. But ultimately, "we wanted her to play it from the inside out and throw away imitation."

Embodying someone so larger than life, so mythical and magnetic and mournful, isn't easy. So why do so many filmmakers and actors keep trying?

Because her persona was so appealing, experts say. She was hypersexual while being oddly accessible, and insanely famous while remaining a cipher.

"She wasn't the characters she played. She was impossibly gorgeous, but she made it OK for people to be attracted to her. She wasn't on a pedestal," says Miranda Banks, associate professor in the school of visual arts at Emerson College.

"She wasn't standoffish; she was playful," Banks says. "She had humor rather than a sense of someone who had to be idolized. Her emotional troubles came about at a time when the nation was starting to talk about these issues. She showed her emotions on her sleeve a bit more than average, and that made people love her more. Her problems with mental health spoke to a generation that was thinking about mental health — we didn't see that in other heroes. She was a different icon for a different generation, for people who were more emotional and who were struggling."