On Movies: Williams the 'perfect' pick to play Marilyn Monroe, director says

It took Simon Curtis the better part of a year - and countless e-mails, phone calls, and a couple of trans-Atlantic meetings - to persuade Michelle Williams she was the right actress to play Marilyn Monroe.

And it probably took that long for Williams to persuade herself.

"She was quite understandably and quite appropriately nervous," the British director says, reflecting on his protracted professional courtship of his My Week With Marilyn star.

"She obviously had a hunch about it, but she obviously needed reassurance that I wasn't a complete buffoon," Curtis adds. "And I hope I did reassure her - but maybe I didn't."

Curtis laughs, but clearly Williams' fears and doubts were assuaged. After all, Williams signed on to play the iconic American screen star - the iconic American screen star on her first trip to England in 1956 when Monroe went to work opposite the esteemed thespian Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl.

My Week With Marilyn, which opens Wednesday at area theaters and stars Kenneth Branagh in the role of Olivier, captures the clash of cultures and acting styles between the sex symbol and the Shakespearean.

"Ironically," Curtis says, "given the dichotomy as it was perceived in 1956 between 'external' English theatrical acting and internal, psychological American acting, Michelle does both. She was perfect for this."

Although the on-set flare-ups between Olivier (who was also directing the film) and Monroe are a big part of My Week With Marilyn, the plot pivots around - and is based on the memoirs of - a young British film assistant's amour fou with the platinum blond. Colin Clark, a lowly gofer working his first back-lot job, apparently spent seven days in the intimate company of the actress. His books The Prince, the Showgirl and Me and My Week With Marilyn offer giddy accounts of a naive 23-year-old just out of university and his improbable relationship with a somewhat less naive, but by no means self-assured, mega movie star.

"That's how this project began - it came from me falling in love with the books, the Colin Clark diaries," explains Curtis, a veteran stage and television director, on a quick stopover in Philadelphia recently.

"I didn't come to it as a big Marilyn obsessive. I came to it as an older guy looking back to a young man's first job, and this sort of golden ticket he got to be inside the making of this amazing, complicated film. And then the extra special golden ticket of gaining this unique insight into Marilyn at the height of her powers."

A larky little movie full of 1950s cars, clothes, and cinema props, My Week with Marilyn also stars Eddie Redmayne as the agog Clark, Judi Dench as grand old Dame Sybil Thorndike, Julia Ormond as actress (and Olivier spouse) Vivien Leigh, Zoë Wanamaker as Monroe's acting coach, Paula Strasberg, Dougray Scott as Monroe's new husband, the American playwright Arthur Miller, and such fine talents as Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, Michael Kitchen, and Harry Potter gal Emma Watson.

It's quite a cast, and Curtis - 51, and long married to actress Elizabeth McGovern - says he had to do a lot of juggling to keep everyone onboard. In fact, he almost didn't have Branagh at all. And in Curtis' view, getting the right actor to portray Olivier was nearly as key as getting the right Monroe.

"The truth is, Kenneth wasn't available because he was doing Thor," says Curtis, referring to the Marvel Comics adventure about Norse gods that Branagh directed. "But then our dates shifted - I can't exactly remember how or why - and suddenly it seemed that even though he was still doing Thor postproduction, he was available for a limited time. And I was so pleased, because he obviously brings an aura with him - as an actor and a director who has directed himself - you know, it just resonates so wonderfully with Olivier's career.

"And he was the right age for Olivier at this time, just as Michelle was for Marilyn. . . .

"Without either of them," he adds, "I think I might have been doomed, actually."