Back in October of last year, we got our very first look at actress Michelle Williams in character as the iconic Marilyn Monroe as she will look in the upcoming biopic My Week with Marilyn (which also stars Emma Watson in her first post-Harry Potter film). Today we get to see a new photo of Michelle as Marilyn and learn that the film will be a centerpiece feature in the 2011 New York Film Festival this year. Want another look at the new Marilyn? Check her out below.

The Weinstein Co. is up front and center with My Week with Marilyn which has just been announced as the centerpiece gala selection for the 2011 New York Film Fest (September 30 – October 16), screening at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday, October 9. From the press release:

“After seeing Marilyn Monroe so often portrayed in films as a caricature, it is a pleasure to see this complex personality and unique on-screen presence portrayed so well by such a talented actress as Michelle Williams,” says Richard Peña, Selection Committee Chair & Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center. Based on Colin Clark’s diaries, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, is set in the early summer of 1956, when a 23 year-old Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL. It was the film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott). Nearly 40 years on, Clark’s diary account The Prince, the Showgirl and Me was published, but one week was missing – which was published some years later as My Week with Marilyn. This is the story of that week. When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Clark to introduce Monroe to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe who was desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work. Produced by David Parfitt, the Weinstein Company release also stars Dominic Cooper, Judi Dench, Julia Ormond, Zoe Wanamaker, Emma Watson, Toby Jones, Philip Jackson, Geraldine Somerville, Derek Jacobi and Simon Russell Beale. The film is set for a November 4 release.

See … it’s tricky to mess with an icon like Marilyn Monroe. If you take, for example, an iconic character like Catwoman and you don’t do her justice … bad things can happen. But in Marilyn‘s case … she was a real person. It is absolutely impossible to do absolute justice to a living person. Actresses like Meryl Streep are among the rare few who can portray a living person and do them justice. Is Michelle Williams one of those actresses? We shall see. At this point, I’d say she has the look down … but looking like Marilyn Monroe and portraying her in a believable manner are two vastly different things. I hope she is up to the task. I’m terribly curious about this film.

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