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You may have an image of Marilyn Monroe as preoccupied with her body image, but she have a great mind and was a true intellectual. Her library had over 400 books, with favourite authors including Joyce, Freud, Hemingway.
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. Conscious control
. Applied conscious control
. Habits of thought and of body
In her last interview, Marilyn says "An actor is not a machine, no matter how much they want to say you are. Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer. You're gay, you're sick, you're nervous or whatever. Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, "One tear, right now," that one tear would pop out. But once there came two tears because I thought, "How dare he?" Goethe said, "Talent is developed in privacy," you know? And it's really true. There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor." Richard Meryman, Life, 3 August 1962. The extract is from an edited version of the interview
By control, I think she is getting at something like the psychophysical unity stressed by Alexander - essential for great acting. Alexander himself had been a Shakespearean reciter.
Marilyn also owned another book by Alexander, the much more readable Use of the Self. Her copy sold at auction in 1999.