Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, and model. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and professional struggles within the film industry.

Early Life
Norma Jean was born to Gladys Mortenson, a film technician, whose husband, Edward Mortenson, deserted the family. She was placed in a series of twelve foster homes, and once in an orphanage. She attended Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles, California.

At sixteen, Norma Jean escaped the foster system by marrying 20-year-old James Dougherty. A year later, in 1943, he joined the U.S. Merchant Marine. Norma Jean took a job in an airline plant, part of the World War II factory effort, and worked first as a parachute inspector, then as a paint sprayer. When the government came through to take promotional photographs of the women working in the plant, Jean learned that she photographed well, took a modeling course, and began working part-time as a photographer's model.

Struggles
She struggled with addiction, depression, and anxiety. Her second and third marriages, to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, were highly publicized and both ended in divorce. On August 4, 1962, she died at age 36 from an overdose of barbiturates at her home in Los Angeles.