Marilyn Monroe

Born: 1 June 1926
Where: Los Angeles, California

Norma Jean Baker endured a fatherless childhood of sexual abuse and poverty and was put in a string of orphanages and foster homes after mother Gladys Baker (nee Monroe), who suffered mental illness, was institutionalised.

At 16 she escaped her old life by marrying a 21-year-old aircraft plant worker, Jim Dougherty, who she divorced four years later.

By this time she had begun modelling bathing suits and, after bleaching her hair blonde, posed for pin-ups and glamour photos.

Howard Hughes tried to get her a screen test but was beaten to the punch by Twentieth Century Fox, who signed her to a contract - at $125 per week for six months - and changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.

After appearing in small parts in films including Love Happy and All About Eve, Monroe found fame in 1953 with Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How To Marry a Millionaire.

That same year, she began dating baseball player Jo DiMaggio and a nude spread of her appeared in the debut issue of Playboy magazine. Monroe had hit stardom.

In 1954, she married DiMaggio - a union which was only to last eight months - before filming There's No Business Like Show Business and The Seven-Year Itch, with the classic scene in which she stood over a subway grating, skirt billowing.

Monroe's work began to slow down but, after undergoing psychoanalysis, critics praised her acting in 1956 film Bus Stop.

She married playwright Arthur Miller the same year, divorcing him four years on. In the meantime she fell prey to alcohol and pills and suffered two miscarriages.

After a year off in 1958, Marilyn returned to the silver screen for smash comedy Some Like It Hot. In 1960 she appeared in Let's Make Love with Yves Montand, with whom she had an affair.

The Misfits, written by husband Miller, was to be her final film. Work was interrupted by exhaustion and she was then fired from Something's Got to Give.

She went into seclusion and on 5 August 1962, she was found dead at her home of an overdose of sleeping pills, aged 36.

The verdict was suicide but has always been disputed, with countless conspiracy theories triggered by alleged affairs with brothers John F and Robert Kennedy.