CS Video: Michelle Williams on My Week with Marilyn

Actress Michelle Williams is one of those rare child actors who’s only gotten better in her chosen profession as she’s reached her 30s. Having started acting in her early teens and done all sorts of odds and ends including a role on “Dawson’s Creek” and a couple of horror movies, she’s made the transition from indie darling to bonafide starlet in a smooth and natural way. In 2006, she was nominated for her first Oscar for her supporting performance in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain and last year, her dramatic role in Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine scored her a second nod.

Now, she stars in Simon Curtis’ My Week with Marilyn, playing the iconic ’50s actress Marilyn Monroe, a performance that’s likely to get Williams her third Oscar nomination, and who knows? Maybe this year she’ll actually win.

As the title suggests, the film covers a week in Marilyn’s life as she traveled to England to film The Prince and the Showgirl with actor/director Sir Laurence Olivier (played brilliantly by Kenneth Branagh). It’s based on the memoirs of Colin Clark (played by Eddie Redmayne) who was working on the movie as a gopher and ended up befriending the starlet after she reached a point where she wasn’t sure who she could trust anymore.

ComingSoon.net had a chance to sit down with Ms. Williams briefly while she was in New York promoting the movie and in the video interview below, she spoke about:

* Why she decided to do this Marilyn movie and how she purposely didn’t watch any other portrayals of the actress
* Whether she had ever done any sort of Marilyn impression before getting the role
* The different layers of the movie and similarities to the actors’ own lives
* Whether she grew to understand the actress by playing her
* If she liked Marilyn more or less after embodying the persona
* How she’s been mixing humor in with drama in recent movies
* Doing a big Oz-inspired fantasy epic with Sam Raimi

As an added bonus, we have an exclusive interview with Williams’ co-star Eddie Redmayne, who plays Colin Clark, the young man through whose eyes we enter Marilyn’s world.

Redmayne is considered by many to be one of the more promising young British actors, having been effortlessly bouncing between stage and screen in recent years. Playing Clark in My Week with Marilyn is quite a breakthrough for the 29 year old, since he’s mainly been part of ensemble casts or played leads in lower profile indies, but he’s definitely following Williams’ footsteps in getting bigger roles including one in Tom Hooper’s Les Mis