Marilyn Monroe: Age, Biography, Career and Facts

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) was an American actress, model and singer, the defining screen icon of 1950s Hollywood and the star of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot. This biography covers her real name, childhood, every major movie, her marriages, the famous dresses, her connection to John F. Kennedy, her death and her legacy as of October 2026.

Age

Marilyn Monroe was born on June 1, 1926 and died on August 4, 1962, at the age of 36.

Who was Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles and died at her home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 4, 1962. In barely a decade as a leading lady she became the most famous film star in the world, a sex symbol who was also a gifted comic actress, and a woman who fought the studio system for better roles, pay and creative control.

She is best remembered for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Seven Year Itch, Bus Stop and Some Like It Hot, for which she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked her sixth among the greatest female screen legends of classic Hollywood.

Marilyn Monroe in numbers

Metric	Value
Real name	Norma Jeane Mortenson (baptized Norma Jeane Baker)
Lifespan	June 1, 1926 – August 4, 1962
Feature films	About 30, from 1947 to 1961
Golden Globes	Best Actress – Musical or Comedy (Some Like It Hot, 1960); World Film Favorite (1962)
Other awards	David di Donatello Award and BAFTA nomination (The Prince and the Showgirl)
Spouses	James Dougherty, Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller
Children	None
AFI ranking	6th among the greatest female screen legends (1999)
Famous dress record	"Happy Birthday, Mr. President" gown: most expensive dress sold at auction (Guinness World Records)

Marilyn Monroe real name and childhood (1926–1943)

Norma Jeane was the third child of Gladys Pearl Baker, a film negative cutter at a Hollywood studio. Her birth certificate named Gladys's estranged husband, Martin Edward Mortensen, as her father, but she never knew who her father was, and she was baptized Norma Jeane Baker. Because her mother struggled financially and suffered from severe mental illness, Norma Jeane spent her first seven years with foster parents in Hawthorne, California.

After a brief period living with her mother, who was committed to a state hospital in 1934, she was placed in the care of Gladys's friend Grace Goddard and spent almost two years in the Los Angeles Orphans Home. She moved between several foster homes and relatives, and later spoke of the loneliness and abuse she experienced in those years. When the Goddards planned to move out of state in 1942, the 16-year-old married her 21-year-old neighbor, James Dougherty, on June 19, 1942, so that she would not have to return to the orphanage.

Modeling and early roles (1944–1952)

While Dougherty served in the merchant marine during World War II, Norma Jeane worked at the Radioplane Munitions Factory in Van Nuys. In 1945 she was photographed there by David Conover of the Army's First Motion Picture Unit for a morale-boosting feature, which led to a modeling contract with the Blue Book agency. She straightened and dyed her curly brown hair blonde and appeared on dozens of magazine covers.

In 1946 she divorced Dougherty and signed a short-term contract with 20th Century Fox, where she chose the name Marilyn Monroe, Monroe being her mother's maiden name. Early contracts at Fox and Columbia produced only small parts, but she drew attention in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950). In 1951 she signed a seven-year contract with Fox and appeared in comedies such as As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business and in the dramas Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock (both 1952). When it emerged in 1952 that she had posed nude for a calendar photographer in 1949, she openly admitted it, and the scandal only increased public interest in her.

Stardom (1953–1955)

1953 made her one of Hollywood's biggest box office draws. She starred as a scheming wife in the Technicolor thriller Niagara, then as showgirl Lorelei Lee in Howard Hawks' musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, where her performance of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" became one of the most imitated numbers in film history. In How to Marry a Millionaire, with Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable, she played a short-sighted gold digger. The same year a nude calendar photo of her appeared in the first issue of Playboy, published without her involvement.

Monroe carefully crafted her image but resented being typecast as a "dumb blonde" and was paid far less than other stars. In January 1954 she was suspended by Fox for refusing to make the musical The Girl in Pink Tights. That month she married baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, and in February she interrupted their honeymoon in Japan to perform for thousands of American troops on a USO tour of Korea. She returned to star in There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) and Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (1955), one of the biggest hits of her career.

Marilyn Monroe dress: the iconic gowns

Two dresses worn by Monroe are among the most famous garments in popular culture. The first is the ivory halter dress designed by William Travilla for The Seven Year Itch, which billows up as she stands over a New York subway grate. The scene was first shot before a crowd of onlookers on Lexington Avenue in September 1954, an event said to have strained her marriage to DiMaggio, and reshot on a studio set.

The second is the sheer, crystal-covered gown designed by Jean Louis, which she wore on May 19, 1962, to sing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. It was so tight that she was reportedly sewn into it. In November 2016 Ripley's Believe It or Not! bought it at Julien's Auctions in Los Angeles for $4.81 million, which Guinness World Records lists as the most expensive dress ever sold at auction, beating the previous record set by the Seven Year Itch dress.

Her own company and acclaim (1955–1959)

At the end of 1954 Monroe left Hollywood for New York and, with photographer Milton Greene, founded Marilyn Monroe Productions, one of the first production companies established by a female star. She studied method acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. In late 1955 Fox gave her a new contract with a higher salary, approval over directors and the right to make films with her own company.

Her next roles won critical respect. In Joshua Logan's Bus Stop (1956) she played a struggling saloon singer, a performance critics regarded as proof of her dramatic ability. In The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), produced by her company and co-starring and directed by Laurence Olivier, she won Italy's David di Donatello Award and a BAFTA nomination. Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959), in which she played the singer Sugar Kane opposite Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, earned her the Golden Globe and is often ranked as the greatest American comedy ever made.

Marilyn Monroe movies

Year	Film	Role
1950	The Asphalt Jungle	Angela Phinlay
1950	All About Eve	Miss Caswell
1952	Clash by Night	Peggy
1952	Don't Bother to Knock	Nell Forbes
1952	Monkey Business	Lois Laurel
1953	Niagara	Rose Loomis
1953	Gentlemen Prefer Blondes	Lorelei Lee
1953	How to Marry a Millionaire	Pola Debevoise
1954	River of No Return	Kay Weston
1954	There's No Business Like Show Business	Vicky Hoffman
1955	The Seven Year Itch	The Girl
1956	Bus Stop	Chérie
1957	The Prince and the Showgirl	Elsie Marina
1959	Some Like It Hot	Sugar Kane Kowalczyk
1960	Let's Make Love	Amanda Dell
1961	The Misfits	Roslyn Taber
1962	Something's Got to Give	Unfinished

Marriages and personal life

Monroe married three times. Her first marriage, to James Dougherty, lasted from 1942 to 1946. She married Joe DiMaggio on January 14, 1954, in San Francisco; the marriage lasted only nine months, but DiMaggio remained devoted to her, arranged her funeral and sent roses to her crypt for 20 years. On June 29, 1956, she married playwright Arthur Miller, author of Death of a Salesman, converting to Judaism before the wedding. Miller wrote The Misfits for her, but the marriage was strained by her miscarriages, health problems and dependence on sleeping pills, and they divorced in January 1961.

Monroe had no children. She suffered an ectopic pregnancy in 1957 and a miscarriage in 1958 during her marriage to Miller and spoke of how much she wanted a family. In 1956 she legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe and JFK

On May 19, 1962, at a fundraising celebration for President John F. Kennedy's 45th birthday at Madison Square Garden, Monroe sang a breathy "Happy Birthday, Mr. President," one of the most famous performances in American political history. A photograph from the after-party shows her with the president and his brother Robert, the only known picture of the three together. Rumors of affairs with John and Robert Kennedy have circulated for decades and fed many conspiracy theories about her death, but no affair has ever been proven by documentary evidence.

Marilyn Monroe death and cause of death

Monroe's last completed film was John Huston's The Misfits (1961), co-starring Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. In 1962 Fox fired her from the comedy Something's Got to Give after repeated absences, then began negotiating to rehire her. Early that year she had bought a Spanish-style house at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, the only home she ever owned on her own.

In the early hours of August 5, 1962, her psychiatrist found her dead in her bedroom there; she had died on the night of August 4. The New York Times reported that an empty bottle of sleeping pills was found beside her bed. On August 17, 1962, the Los Angeles County coroner announced that the cause was acute barbiturate poisoning and classified her death as a probable suicide. A 1982 review by the Los Angeles district attorney's office found no evidence of foul play, though theories of murder or a cover-up have persisted. She was interred in a crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Her Brentwood home survived a long fight over its future. In June 2024 the Los Angeles City Council declared it a historic-cultural monument to save it from demolition, and in September 2025, the Los Angeles Times reported, a court ruling again blocked attempts to tear it down.

Legacy

More than six decades after her death, Monroe remains one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Andy Warhol began his famous series of Marilyn silkscreens weeks after she died, and on May 9, 2022, his Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold at Christie's in New York for $195 million, the most ever paid at auction for a 20th-century artwork. Her image has been the subject of countless books, exhibitions and films, including My Week with Marilyn (2011), with Michelle Williams, and Netflix's Blonde (2022), with Ana de Armas, both of which earned their leads Oscar nominations.

Quick facts

Real name	Norma Jeane Mortenson
Born	June 1, 1926, Los Angeles, California
Died	August 4, 1962, Brentwood, Los Angeles
Cause of death	Acute barbiturate poisoning, ruled probable suicide
Mother	Gladys Pearl Baker
Spouses	James Dougherty (1942–1946), Joe DiMaggio (1954–1955), Arthur Miller (1956–1961)
Best-known films	Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Seven Year Itch, Bus Stop, Some Like It Hot
Resting place	Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery

Timeline

• June 1, 1926: Born in Los Angeles
• June 19, 1942: Married James Dougherty
• 1945: Discovered while working in a munitions factory
• 1946: First contract with 20th Century Fox; took the name Marilyn Monroe
• 1950: Noticed in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve
• 1953: Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire
• January 14, 1954: Married Joe DiMaggio
• 1955: The Seven Year Itch; founded her own production company
• June 29, 1956: Married Arthur Miller
• 1959: Some Like It Hot
• 1961: The Misfits; divorce from Miller
• May 19, 1962: Sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to JFK
• August 4, 1962: Died at her Brentwood home
• November 2016: The JFK birthday dress sold for a record $4.81 million
• May 9, 2022: Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold for $195 million
• June 2024: Her Brentwood house declared a historic-cultural monument

Photo: Studio publicity still, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons