The first person to play Marilyn Monroe was Marilyn Monroe.

"Do you want to see me become her?" the actress born Norma Jean Mortensen asked one day while walking down Broadway in New York, according to Amy Greene, the wife of Monroe's personal photographer Milton Greene.

"I don't know how to explain what she did because it was so very subtle," Greene recalled in 2020, "but she turned on something within herself that was almost like magic. And suddenly cars were slowing and people were turning their heads and stopping to stare."

It was more than platinum blonde hair and a brilliant smile that turned the Some Like It Hot star into a legend. But recreating her iconic physical traits has certainly been a good place to start for the slew of actresses who've played Monroe onscreen over the past 40 years, as well as all the celebs who've tried her style on for size.

My Week With Marilyn's Michelle Williams and Ana de Armas—who did her own jaw-dropping take on the moment Marilyn would turn into Marilyn in the 2022 film Blonde—were both nominated for Oscars for their portrayals of the oft-underestimated actress.

“People wanted Marilyn, they wanted that product," de Armas said on Today at the time. "She had to keep delivering that because the opposite was nothing. She was nothing else. She was not considered anything else.”

The latest to channel Monroe is Dakota Johnson, who is unrecognizable in images from writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal's upcoming short film Flesh Impact, set to premiere during the 2026 Venice International Film Festival.

In Gyllenhaal's vision, which she said showcases "the timeless icon we know and love through a modern lens that reclaims her story," Monroe is also played Ellen Burstyn, the 93-year-old embodying a version of the legend that could have been, had the star not died at 36 in 1962.

Not least because Monroe's life was tragically short, there have been endless deep dives into what made her tick, as well as a slew of biopics hoping to capture the truth in their own way.

Monroe "perfected a persona that she created," Catherine Hicks, who starred in Marilyn: The Untold Story in 1980, told LA Monthly in June. "All of those Marilyn-isms...In order for someone to be a movie star, the audience needs to be addicted to that movie stars mannerisms and want more. Most movie stars do about five things, and we all love those five things. Underneath that all, you could see a glimpse of her loneliness in every role she played."

See all the stars who've transformed into Monroe through the years:

Dakota Johnson sported a singular shade of blonde to play Marilyn Monroe at the height of her fame in writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal's short film Flesh Impact, heralded in a press release as  “a love letter to one of cinema’s most enduring icons."

The short is slated to have its world premiere at the 2026 Venice International Film Festival.

Ana de Armas earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a doomed Monroe in the 2022 film Blonde, based on the Joyce Carole Oates novel of the same name.

For the 2022 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian borrowed the dress Monroe wore when she sang "Happy Birthday" to Mr. President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in 1962.

Here with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio, Monroe's second husband, Kelli Garner starred in the 2015 Lifetime miniseries The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe. 

On the 2012 NBC show Smash, Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty played rival actresses—one fresh off the bus from Iowa, the other a seasoned performer—battling it out to star on Broadway in the musical Marilyn.

Michelle Williams scored a Best Actress Oscar nomination for playing the icon in 2011's My Week With Marilyn, based on writer Colin Clark's account of exactly that while the actress was shooting 1956's The Prince and the Showgirl in London.

Monroe inspired Paris Hilton's fragrance Tease, hence the heiress channeling her idol at the 2010 launch party.

"I love her, she's one of my favorite blondes of all time," Hilton said at a 2008 event. "When people compare us, it's a big compliment."

"Our lifestyles are a lot alike," Anna Nicole Smith said on The Arsenio Hall Show of the similarities between her and the platinum blonde legend she admired to no end. "I don't know, we have this certain kind of bond. I've went through tons of things that she went through, and am going through now."

Of the possibility of playing her one day on screen, she added, "I just want to keep her alive and, who knows?"

Smith also eerily told FHM, "I’ve got so much on my plate—acting, modeling, movie scripts, that I’m probably gonna die at 37 like Marilyn.”

Monroe was actually only 36. Smith died in 2007 at the age of 39.

Coffee was a girl's best friend back when Katie Couric was co-anchoring Today, where they always go all out for Halloween. Back in 2005, Couric dressed as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes-era Marilyn.

Before it was turned into a movie years later, Blonde was adapted into a four-part CBS miniseries starring Poppy Montgomery in 2001.

Oscar winner Mira Sorvino was nominated for an Emmy for her turn as the actress born Norma Jeane Mortensen, played in pre-Hollywood form by Ashley Judd), once she'd blossomed into the screen star Marilyn Monroe in the 1996 HBO movie Norma Jean & Marilyn.

Though her character was only billed as "The Actress," Theresa Russell was unmistakably playing the Seven Year Itch star in the surreal 1985 drama Insignificance.

Catherine Hicks' blonde ambition secured her an Emmy nomination for starring in the 1980 ABC movie Marilyn: The Untold Story, based on Norman Mailer's biography of the star.