Movie star. Platinum blonde. Icon.

There have been hundreds of biographies written about the star of Some Like It Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Misfits. Publishing on the hundredth anniversary of her birth, Andrew Wilson’s biography of Marilyn Monroe is a fresh and illuminating journey through the life of an icon.

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, she had an uncertain and unforgiving upbringing with a mentally unwell mother, an absent father and cruel foster parents. She grew up in Los Angeles and would dream about Hollywood, and believed acting would be her one-way ticket to a different reality. Her dream was so powerful that she transformed herself into the ultimate goddess of the silver screen, and her image has been branded into the collective consciousness. Men lusted after her, and women seemed to adore her child-like vulnerability. All her life, she wanted to be happy – and loved.

As we reach the start of Marilyn’s film career we are thrown into the setting of fifties Hollywood, where actresses were expected to sleep with producers, agents and studio executives. We see a young Marilyn trying to free herself from the constraints of Twentieth Century Fox and struggling to forge her own path, as well as the joys – and sorrows – brought on by her marriages to baseball star Joe DiMaggio and famous playwright Arthur Miller. Her status as a sex symbol seemed to bring with it more complications than advantages, leading to the breakdowns of her marriages.

Beyond the icon persona, Marilyn Monroe was full of surprises. She was highly intelligent and well-read, and formed long-term friendships with poets, philosophers, playwrights and political activists, such as with the avant-garde poet Edith Sitwell and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Her desire to train as a serious actress also led her to spend seven years at the Actors Studio, trained by Lee Strasberg.

In the concluding chapters, Andrew Wilson walks us through what he believes happened on 4 August 1962 – the night Marilyn Monroe passed away from a suspected drug overdose. Were the Kennedys involved, or was she just let down by those closest to her?

I Wanna Be Loved By You is a revealing and nuanced portrait of the life, death and afterlife of an icon who still fascinates us today.