Monroe was born as Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles in 1926, and brought up by Christian foster parents because her mother Gladys was mentally unable to raise a child. She later became a ward of the state, living with allegedly abusive family friends, and then in an orphanage. Going to the cinema, Monroe recalled ‘I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim … When I heard that this was acting, I said “that’s what I want to be.”’ In 1944, having had her picture taken working at a munitions factory, Monroe quit to become a model for the photographer, against the wishes of her first husband (a factory worker turned Marine whom she married aged sixteen). Here the self-construction began.
