"So it would have been Marilyn Monroe's 75th birthday on June 1. There have been so many commentaries on Marilyn over the years, all sorts of takes that represent all sorts of era's attitudes about women. It's interesting to look at Marilyn from the point of view of 2001. Marilyn was so apple pie, so American. It was Marilyn, apple pie and Jimmy Stewart. [laughs] But by now her photographic image has been exploited over and over again--to such a point that it doesn't have anything to do with her. The thing that comes to mind from my point of view as an actress--and as somebody who has also been called a sex symbol and has had to live with that label--is that she said she didn't like being a 'thing.' And that's exactly what she's become. Whether it was Marilyn or Elvis, you had those one-dimensional images that didn't allow people behind the facade to breathe. Today it's different.
In fact, Marilyn's main gift was her talent as a comedienne. Her vulnerability was so exaggerated in the persona she created, that it was, in fact, a caricature. Not that she wasn't vulnerable. I'll go further and say she was frightened, with a tenuous grasp on any kind of identity. So she sort of leaned into The Voice and The Walk, and that made her almost hypnotic. Let's face it: What she found was a way to get power through a passive-aggressive situation-very sexual, very available, in an exaggerated way.
I remember when I first saw pictures or her as a young girl--my father never allowed us to have any tabloid magazines in our house. But I had a girlfriend who literally had stacks of them--like five feet high--and I used to be over there all the time seeing all these pictures of the people that I liked. Tony Curtis was the cute guy, and Marilyn Monroe was Marilyn Monroe. There were so many beautiful people in those magazines that one wonders, 'What was it about Marilyn that made her stand out?' There is no question that she was exceptionally beautiful, but there was more that came from within her, this kind of openness. You got the feelings that she was open to everything--dogs, children, men, anything that had any love or smiles attached to it. I was always fascinated by her. And then the thing that started to fascinate me even more was how unlike her I was. There is a common ground between us, however--a need to have a feeling of positive attention coming toward us. In Marilyn's case, as has been often sai d, her mother was not well, mentally, and she didn't know who her father was. You know, I'm not really a Marilyn aficionado. I'm just a person who has been in the business, and you come across information that is interesting to you, so you gather it up. I don't know if I've got all my facts straight, but I do know that when you don't have anybody who can reassure you that you are loved, and that you have a voice and can express yourself, it leaves a hunger and a need that you have to find a way to fill. Marilyn was looking for a father figure, a strong male figure. With Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller and Jack Kennedy and those kinds of people, she was hoping to finally find a man who would provide safety and power. The similarity that Marilyn and I would have had would be that we found our physicality was a source of power. There are lots of different kinds of power. There's money, people with money; they can call shots and they call attention because they have power. There's physical power, people who can th reaten you because they seem to be frightening. And then there is the physical sexual attraction that you can elicit, which is also a tremendous kind of power. If you have that, you can have other kinds of power, because you will be able to sort of use that and parlay it into a whole identity. The fact is: you wouldn't need to go in search of power if you already felt empowered.
After I got into the business I could see what a terrible trap the whole thing could be, and how limiting and frightening it was. Of course, I ended up presenting an image that was totally anti-Marilyn. Look at the poster of me from One Million Years B.C. [1966]: the legs are astride and the arms are poised and very athletic-looking. The image is very formidable. It says, 'This is somebody you're gonna have to deal with. This is a strong woman.' I was a cutoff point between that vulnerable female icon and the more independent female. Based on my experience with my father I saw that men are not necessarily benevolent and lovely all the time, and that they aren't the answer to happiness, and women are always given a secondary role and that they are in a position of submissiveness and servitude a lot. And I just thought, 'No. Uh-uh. I don't think so.'
If Marilyn was 25 now, and had the benefit of the women's movement and of changing perceptions, she couldn't have been Marilyn Monroe. Today you have 13-year-old girls as promiscuous as Marilyn was then, when she was trying to find her way to the top of a very decadent town. So to ask about what Marilyn Monroe might have been today is to ask a question that is not answerable. I don't think she would have been Marilyn the Myth. In 2001 we're at a crossroads, which we saw in the last election, where we really have a divide right down the middle of American society and we don't know how to get across it. If Marilyn hadn't died, and was still alive today, I think the world would have been quite cruel to her as she aged. I don't think she wanted to make a transition into other things. I'm not sure she had the capacity for that. Still, I would have liked to have known her. That would have been nice. We've had similar experiences, and it would have been nice to share some of those experiences with her. I think that kind of camaraderie would've been interesting; even if it was only very episodic, it would've been nice just to exchange notes and talk with her. Marilyn's point of view must've been unique, and I could've learned a lot from her.

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this articel is useful because it provides a link between how marilyn monroe was portrayed by the media, however it is quite positive therefore it can be seen as biased so it may not be as useful.