Marilyn MONROE

Her air of vulnerability and ditzy charm made her a star. But behind those doe eyes lay a hidden strength unknown to the world. Nearly 60 years after Monroe’s death, we look back at the life of Hollywood’s most misunderstood icon

By the time 1954 rolled around, Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star in the world. She couldn't move without being mobbed by fans, and she was a regular cover girl on magazines everywhere. But before the beloved blonde bombshell won over the world, she spent most of her early years longing to be loved.

Before there was Marilyn, there was Norma Jeane Mortenson (her birth name, though she was baptised Norma Jeane Baker). Born in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926 to Gladys Baker, Monroe arrived into the world in an absence of intimacy. Her mother, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, never knew who Monroe's father was. But Gladys, who was traumatised by the bipolar disorder of her own mother - Monroe's earliest memory was of her grandmother trying to smother her - did know that she could not take care of her child.

Shunted between foster homes and, at one stage, an orphanage, Monroe spent her childhood under the care of 12 different families. When she was seven, her mother took charge until a family friend, Grace McKee, had Monroe's mother committed to a mental institution. For two years, McKee became the child's substitute mother.

Yet, when she remarried, McKee sent Monroe to the Los Angeles Orphans' Home, only to take her back two years later and then, for reasons that are unclear (some sources say her husband molested Monroe), she was shunted to another relative's house, where a cousin allegedly raped her at age 12. She suffered night terrors throughout childhood, persisting into adulthood, and she was left with a legacy of mental illness that would torment her all her life with the fear that she, too, would go mad.