Marilyn Monroe is one of the most written about and talked about celebrities and one of the most iconic symbols of American pop culture, up there with Elvis Presley and Mickey Mouse. Everyone has an opinion about her by this point, ranging from how she is a role model for women to how she is a symbol of Hollywood victimization to her status as a fashion icon and a sex symbol. But I’m not going to get too deep into any of that with this article. Today I’m just going to embark on a frivolous experiment by asking myself a question: Is there a modern-day Marilyn Monroe in today’s Hollywood? And if so, who comes the closest to being like her?

There are many attributes you can factor in to find the answer to that question, because many of today’s celebrities still share a lot in common with yesterday’s stars. For example, Marilyn was born as Norma Jean but she changed her name to “Marilyn Monroe” after arriving in Hollywood. Many celebrities to this day still go by stage names that are different from the names they were born with, including Helen Mirren, Whoopi Goldberg, Natalie Portman and Portia de Rossi. In fact with the way Norma Jean talked about Marilyn Monroe you could say that she saw Marilyn as her alter ego. Building and maintaining stage personas with completely different names and exaggerated characteristics is also something that is common in Hollywood. We’ve seen it before with Pee-wee Herman and Larry the Cable Guy, and we still see it today with younger celebrities such as Awkwafina and Sarah Squirm (aka Saturday Night Live star Sarah Sherman). You could even say the Norma/Marilyn double life has certain similarities to a drag performance (as many drag queens have gleefully pointed out).

But then there is the challenge of forming an opinion while blocking out the noise. Marilyn Monroe is invoked a ton of times in the media and it seems like every fashion magazine or entertainment news website is always calling someone the next Marilyn. Anna Nicole Smith has been called the modern-day Marilyn Monroe. Kim Kardashian has been called the modern-day Marilyn Monroe. At one point the filmmaking magazine Film Comment has even made a more nuanced assessment by comparing Marilyn Monroe to the actress Kristen Stewart (a more modern version of a Hollywood sex symbol) by pointing out the ability both women have to turn their screen charm on like a light switch. Of course I have my own opinions about the similarities Marilyn shares with modern-day celebs. Hence the writing of this article.

Like I said, Marilyn’s iconic. Many women love to quote her, dress up like her on Halloween and pay homage to her, and many even relate to her. So follow me down the rabbit hole as I try to answer this question.

Paris Hilton

The New York City socialite and great-granddaughter of Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton has been a fashion model on the NYC scene since the nineties but got catapulted to fame in 2003 thanks to her FOX reality series A Simple Life co-starring Nicole Richie as well as her notorious sex tape with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon. So far based on that origin story there isn’t a lot of stuff she has in common with Marilyn Monroe, despite Hilton’s clear idolization of her. Norma Jean was not born into wealth, and unlike Hilton, Monroe sought to be taken seriously as an actor in show business rather than coast on her fame with endless media ventures. But one similarity the two share is that the persona of the “dumb blonde” screen role skyrocketed their fame to new heights and led to many people in the public assuming this was how they really acted despite both Marilyn Monroe and Paris Hilton being a lot smarter than the media gave them credit for. Of course Paris Hilton has openly admitted that the way she acted on A Simple Life was a persona and these days female celebrities are given a lot more respect and a lot more freedom to speak directly to their fans thanks to websites like Instagram. So Hilton’s struggles are nowhere near the struggles Marilyn went through.

Verdict:

NOT the modern-day Marilyn

Scarlett Johansson

I’ve heard people call Scarlett Johansson the modern-day Marilyn a few times so let’s dissect that. Johansson was a child actor in the nineties who became a famous adult actor in the 2000s thanks to indie films like Lost in Translation and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She has seemingly been very lucky with her acting choices ever since then because she has gotten a wide variety of roles in various genres. She delves in science fiction a lot having played a superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a psychokinetic lab experiment in Lucy, an alien in Under the Skin and an A.I. voice in Her while still being able to stretch her dramatic muscles in prestige fare playing an anti-Nazi German woman in the darkly comical Jojo Rabbit and an ex-wife in the bitter divorce drama Marriage Story. So already her career is looking a lot different from Marilyn’s. Marilyn Monroe was pigeonholed as a dumb blonde for much of her career and she never really got the chance to escape that in her lifetime. The only similarity I can think of is that they are both highly paid and both stunning bombshells who are strongly desired by men, but that’s a shallow metric. Although Johansson did pay homage to Marilyn once in a Dolce & Gabbana ad.

Verdict:

NOT the modern-day Marilyn

Lindsay Lohan

While Marilyn Monroe was more than just a sex symbol, don’t get it twisted. She still loved being one, and she seemed to embrace and see humor in the fact that she was the object of so many men’s desires, even appearing completely nude in the very first issue of the men’s magazine Playboy. Not to mention the way she turned a gust of wind into her best friend in The Seven-Year Itch and the sultry way she sang to the President of the United States on his birthday. These sexy charades did little to help her get taken seriously by men or women, and it was only really after her death that she would become iconic and universally beloved. After that she lived on in pop culture through the counterculture movement through Madonna’s “Material Girl” music video through Lindsay Lohan. The child actor who grew up on screen with films like The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday and Mean Girls has compared herself to her screen idol Marilyn Monroe multiple times and she clearly has an affinity for her and a connection with her, even paying homage to Marilyn by posing as her in some photoshoots, including one for Playboy back in 2011, blonde hair and all (or none, seeing as how she was completely naked). Not to discount Lohan’s admiration and personal connection to Marilyn which is valid, but if I had to assess the connection between these two ladies myself, I would say their similarities are more pointed in their chaotic personal lives than in their film roles, which honestly have little in common. Lohan and Monroe both had their share of struggles behind the scenes, and while yes, like Monroe, Lohan struggled to break free from a screen persona to be taken more seriously as an actor (in her case the squeaky clean Disney persona, which is something that many Disney child stars have had to contend with), unfortunately she has become much more widely known for her legal troubles and brushes with rehab as well as being a prime target for tabloid fodder than her film roles in this period. A period that was so damaging to her career that it still feels like she’s struggling to make a comeback to this day. But if media outlets that capitalize on the pain of celebrities and dehumanize young women are the biggest thing Monroe and Lohan have in common, then they also share that in common with Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, Meghan Markle and others. The 1950s and the 2000s may have been very different eras but fame can be difficult to navigate for any woman in any era.

Verdict:

NOT the modern-day Marilyn

Margot Robbie

Looking at Norma Jean’s life and the way she navigated show business, you see the struggle she went through building her fame on the dumb blonde airhead persona while still trying to be taken seriously as an actor, producer and businesswoman. But rather than combat this ad nauseum, she took matters into her own hands by forming her own production company so that she could create the kinds of film roles she wanted to play. Something that many women in Hollywood have done for similar reasons, including Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, Sandra Bullock, Charlize Theron, Salma Hayek and Natalie Portman. But if you were a film fan in 2023, you are probably aware that one of the most successful women in Hollywood to make a venture like this is Margot Robbie. The Queensland-born Aussie who took the world by storm as Harley Quinn and Barbie often gets the Marilyn Monroe comparisons for her blonde hair and supermodel looks, but she also took it a step further by forming LuckyChap Entertainment in 2014 to have more creative control producing her own films just like Marilyn did. So she not only has the blonde bombshell part down but also the savvy businesswoman part down as well. And not only has she had success producing star vehicles for herself like I, Tonya and Barbie. She also helped put Emerald Fennell on the map by producing both Promising Young Woman and Saltburn at LuckyChap. And while I would say this definitely qualifies Robbie for the title of “Girl Boss,” that has not stopped her from embracing her sex appeal when she wants to, including in films like The Wolf of Wall Street and Babylon. This success both artistic, financial and variety-wise makes me think that Robbie’s career is probably the closest to the career Marilyn Monroe would have liked to have had if she were a working actor today. So congratulations Margot Robbie for being the closest thing we have in my opinion to a modern-day Marilyn.

Verdict:

The modern-day Marilyn