Six-year-old Norma Jeane Mortenson Poppy Montgomery is raised by her mentally unstable mother, Gladys Pearl Baker Patricia Richardson. On her seventh birthday in 1933, Norma Jeane is given a framed picture of a man that Gladys claims was her father. That night, a fire breaks out in the Hollywood Hills. Gladys tries to drive Norma Jeane toward a fire-proof mansion she claims is inhabited by a friend, but police orders force her to turn back. Norma asks why her father left them, which enrages Gladys, who bursts into tears, shouts, and strikes Norma. Back home, Gladys runs a bath and forces Norma to bathe, despite her protests that it’s too hot. While giving Norma Jeane a bath, an enraged Gladys tries to drown her. Norma Jeane flees to the neighbor Miss Flynn, who promises she will be safe. Days later, Norma Jeane is sent to an orphanage while Gladys is admitted to a mental hospital, declared unfit to raise a child.
In the 1940s, Norma Jeane has become a pin-up model under the stage name Marilyn Monroe, gracing magazine covers and calendars. While chasing a break in acting, she is raped by film studio president Mr. Z. In 1951, she auditions for the role of Nell in Don’t Bother to Knock; the audition goes awry when she breaks down and leaves in tears, but the casting director is impressed enough to give her the part. As her career rises, she meets Charles “Cass” Chaplin Jr. Patrick Dempsey and Edward G. “Eddy” Robinson Jr. Jensen Ackles, and becomes involved with both. Norma Jeane lands her breakout film in 1953 with Niagara, but public sightings with Cass and Eddy prompt her agent to ask that she limit appearances with them in public, upsetting her because she feels that her Marilyn Monroe persona is only a role, not her true self.
Norma Jeane becomes pregnant by Cass, but decides to have an abortion out of fear that the child might inherit her mother’s mental illness. Cass supports her decision. On the day of the appointment, she changes her mind, but her pleas to cancel are ignored. Afterward, she ends things with Cass and Eddy. She later meets Joe DiMaggio, a retired athlete who sympathizes with her desire to leave Hollywood and pursue serious acting in New York City. As Norma Jeane begins Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she receives a letter from a man claiming to be her father. She feels detached from her onscreen performance at the premiere, saying it’s not her. Returning to her hotel room, she finds DiMaggio instead, who proposes, and she accepts reluctantly.
Her marriage to DiMaggio falters when Cass and Eddy feed Joe nude publicity photographs of her, enraging him to the point of violence and forcing her to stop making The Seven Year Itch. She still completes the iconic dress sequence, but at home a drunken DiMaggio yells and escalates the abuse, leading to a divorce. In 1955, Norma Jeane auditions for Magda, a Broadway play by the renowned Playwright Griffin Dunne. The reading earns praise from most, and Norma Jeane eventually marries Arthur Miller, moving with him to Maine in search of happiness and a second pregnancy. A beachside miscarriage shatters that dream, sending her back toward acting.
Back on screen, while filming Some Like It Hot, Norma Jeane grows more unstable under the relentless press, feeling increasingly like a joke, unleashing outbursts on set—especially toward director Billy Wilder—and drifting further from Arthur Miller. To cope, she turns to pills. By 1962, she is deeply dependent on drugs and alcohol. Secret Service agents take an intoxicated Norma Jeane to a hotel to meet President John F. Kennedy—who rapes her—and have her removed after she vomits in his bed. Dizzy and dazed, she wonders if this is what being Marilyn Monroe has led to, and she hallucinates another abortion before being sent back to Los Angeles. She learns from Eddy, over the phone, that Cass has died and left something for her; when she finally opens the package, she discovers the stuffed tiger she once shared with them and a letter from Cass confessing that the letters she’s been receiving from her father were actually written by him.
Shattered by the revelation, Norma Jeane overdoses on barbiturates. As she lies dying, she envisions her father welcoming her to the afterlife.
