15 Shocking Facts About Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson and grew up in poverty. Her mother, Gladys Baker, suffered from serious mental illness and was repeatedly institutionalized. Marilyn spent her childhood moving between foster homes and an orphanage, without any stability. Her father? She never knew him.

Her unstable childhood made her extra vulnerable. Marilyn later said she had been sexually abused as a child in one of the homes she lived in, and that she wasn't believed when she tried to tell people.

At just 16, she married James Dougherty, a young factory worker. The marriage was arranged largely so she wouldn't have to return to an orphanage when her foster family moved away. Dougherty wanted a housewife, but Marilyn dreamed of a career; she chose Hollywood, and they divorced in 1946.

In 1949, long before she was famous, Marilyn needed money and posed nude for a photographer for a fee of 50 dollars. Years later one of those photos was used in the very first issue of Playboy in 1953, without her earning an extra cent.

Marilyn was naturally brunette. Early in her career she bleached her hair platinum blonde, and she is widely believed to have had minor cosmetic procedures, including work on her chin and the tip of her nose, and her teeth corrected. The Marilyn Monroe look was to a large extent a Hollywood creation.

Despite her image as a confident sex symbol, Marilyn suffered from severe stage fright and insecurity. She struggled to remember lines, was often late to set and had panic attacks before shooting. Directors found her unreliable, but once the camera rolled, she was magic.

Marilyn was portrayed as a dumb blonde, but she was anything but. Claims about a sky-high IQ are unverified, but she read philosophy and poetry, studied at the Actors Studio and owned a personal library of around 400 books.

Some of the most persistent rumors in Hollywood history claim Marilyn had an affair with President John F. Kennedy and later with his brother Robert. They have never been conclusively proven, but her breathy 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President' performance in May 1962 fueled the speculation, just months before her death.

To cope with anxiety, insomnia and depression, Marilyn was prescribed a steady stream of medication by doctors and psychiatrists: sleeping pills, barbiturates and other sedatives. It became a vicious circle of pills to sleep and pills to function.

Marilyn desperately wanted to become a mother, but it wasn't meant to be. During her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller she suffered an ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage, and her grief over this was immense. She increasingly relied on medication and alcohol to numb the pain.

Because of her left-leaning friends and her marriage to Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe was on the FBI's radar. Declassified documents show the bureau monitored her for possible communist sympathies, which has fueled conspiracy theories about her death ever since.

Officially, Marilyn Monroe died on 5 August 1962 of a barbiturate overdose, ruled a probable suicide. But many questions remain: was it suicide, an accident or something else? Why were there inconsistencies in the timeline? Some theories point to the Kennedys, the FBI or even the mafia, though none has ever been proven.

Shortly before her death, Marilyn gave an extensive interview to Life magazine in which she spoke candidly about fame, loneliness and the feeling of being treated as an object rather than a person. A few weeks later she was dead.

Joe DiMaggio, her second husband, arranged her funeral and kept the Hollywood crowd and the press away. For twenty years he had roses delivered to her crypt several times a week, and according to his lawyer his last words were that he would finally get to see Marilyn again.

During her life Marilyn Monroe struggled with money, but after her death she became a multimillion-dollar industry. Her name and image still generate millions every year, and she remains one of the most recognizable icons ever.