Marilyn Monroe

It is September 1954, in New York. A crowd of about 2,000 people stands on Lexington Avenue. They are all looking at one woman in a white dress.

She stands on a metal grate in the pavement. A train rushes by under the street. Air blows up and her dress flies up around her knees. She laughs. The cameras click and click.

That woman is Marilyn Monroe. The scene is for a film called The Seven Year Itch. Today it is one of the most famous pictures in the world.

But the girl inside that white dress did not start out famous. She did not even start out as Marilyn. To find her, we have to go back to a hospital in Los Angeles, on the first day of June in 1926.

She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on 1 June 1926. Her mother, Gladys, worked cutting strips of film for a film company. Gladys could not look after a baby on her own.

So Norma Jeane went to live with a foster family, the Bolenders, in a town called Hawthorne. A foster family is a family who looks after a child who is not their own. She stayed with them until she was seven. Those early years were calm and happy.

Then things got hard. In 1934 her mother became very ill. The illness was in her mind, and doctors called it paranoid schizophrenia. Gladys spent most of the rest of her life in hospitals.

Norma Jeane was moved from place to place. She lived with a family who rented rooms. She stayed with her mother's friend, Grace. When she was nine, Grace took her to an orphanage. That is a home for children with no parents to care for them. Norma Jeane felt left behind.

She grew shy and quiet. She started to stutter, which means her words got stuck when she tried to speak. Yet she was good at writing. Later, in school, she wrote for the school paper.

Now for the stars. A birth chart is a map of the sky at the exact moment and place a person was born. Western astrologers look at where the Sun, the Moon and the planets were standing in that map.

Your Sun sign is the one most people know. It is the sign the Sun was in on your birthday. Marilyn's Sun was in Gemini. Gemini is the sign of the twins. Astrologers say Gemini people are quick, chatty and curious. They like to try on different sides of themselves.

That fits a girl who grew up with two names. Norma Jeane was the shy one. Marilyn was the bright one the cameras loved. Two sides, one person. That is a very Gemini picture.

Your Moon sign is the sign the Moon was in when you were born. Astrologers say the Moon shows your feelings, the private you that comes out at home. Marilyn's Moon was in Aquarius. Aquarius is the sign of the outsider, the one who stands a little apart from the group.

A child who moved from bed to bed would know that feeling well. She was often the new girl. She was often the one watching from the edge.

There is one more big sign in a chart. Your rising sign is the sign that was coming up over the eastern horizon at the moment you were born. Think of it as the front door of your house. It is the first thing other people see.

We can know Marilyn's rising sign because her birth time is written on a birth record. She was born at 9:30 in the morning. That time gives her Leo rising.

Leo is the lion. It is the sign of the stage, the spotlight and the big warm smile. Astrologers say Leo rising people walk into a room and the room turns to look.

There is another planet sitting near that front door. Neptune was also in Leo, in the part of her chart that stands for how she looks to the world. Astrologers call Neptune the planet of dreams, films and glamour. A dream face in the lion's sign. It is hard to think of a better fit for a film star.

So here is the whole set. A chatty Gemini Sun. A Moon in Aquarius that felt like an outsider. And a Leo face that the whole world wanted to look at.

In 1942 her guardians were moving away. Norma Jeane faced going back to the orphanage. So, just after her sixteenth birthday, she married a neighbour called James Dougherty. She later said she was dying of boredom in that marriage.

During the war she got a job at a factory that made parts for planes. One day a photographer named David Conover came to take pictures of women at work. He saw something in her face. Soon she left the factory to be a model.

A model agency told her to dye her brown hair blonde. By early 1946 she had been on 33 magazine covers.

That same year a film studio called 20th Century Fox gave her a short contract. A man there named Ben Lyon picked her new name: Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was her mother's family name.

It was not easy at first. Her acting teachers thought she was too shy to act. Studios let her go more than once. But she kept going to classes. She kept turning up.

Astrologers also look at the angles between planets. These angles are called aspects. A square is a sharp angle of 90 degrees. Astrologers say a square feels like friction, like two people pulling a rope in different directions.

Marilyn's Moon was in a close square to Saturn. Saturn is the planet of hard work, rules and lessons that take a long time. A Moon square Saturn, astrologers say, can feel like a cold wind on your feelings. It can make a person feel they are never quite good enough.

That matches what people saw. Marilyn had bad stage fright. She worried about every line. She often could not sleep. She wanted badly to be taken seriously.

But she also had Mars in a close trine to Saturn. A trine is a smooth angle, like a door that swings open with ease. Mars is the planet of drive and push. Mars and Saturn working together, astrologers say, make a person who can grind away for years. She did. She took acting lessons for most of her life.

In 1953 everything took off. The film Niagara was a hit. Then came Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, where she sang Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend. She pressed her hands and feet into wet cement outside a famous cinema in Hollywood. That is a big honour for a film star.

In January 1954 she married the baseball star Joe DiMaggio. On a trip that year she sang for American soldiers in South Korea. The marriage lasted only about nine months.

Then came a big change. Fox kept giving her the same "dumb blonde" parts. She was paid far less than other stars of her fame. So in late 1954 she left Hollywood and moved to New York. She set up her own film company with a friend, Milton Greene.

I think walking out on Hollywood to start her own company was the bravest thing she ever did.

In New York she studied at the Actors Studio with a teacher named Lee Strasberg. At the end of 1955 Fox gave her a new deal. This time she could choose her own films and her own directors. The shy girl had won.

Chinese astrology gives each year an animal and an element. Marilyn was born in a Fire Tiger year. Chinese astrologers say Tigers are bold and restless and hate to be caged. Fire adds heat and a need to be seen.

Chinese astrologers also look at the day you were born. They call it your Day Master. It stands for you, yourself. Marilyn's Day Master is yin Metal. Yin Metal is not a big iron sword. It is a jewel, a ring or a fine needle. Chinese astrologers say yin Metal people are polished and fine, and easily scratched.

Then there is numerology, which turns your birth date into a number. You add up all the digits of the date until you get one digit. That is your Life Path number. Marilyn's is 7. Numerologists say 7 is the number of the thinker who keeps a private, inner room.

It suits her. She took acting classes for years and studied hard in New York. Behind the famous smile, she was always trying to learn more.

The slow planets, from Jupiter out to Pluto, take years to move through one sign. Astrologers watch where they touch the planets in your birth chart. Here are five days from Marilyn's life.

When she married at sixteen in June 1942, Pluto made a square to the top of her chart. Astrologers call that top point the Midheaven. It stands for your career and your name in public. Her career had not even started yet. The pressure was already there.

In February 1956 she changed her name by law to Marilyn Monroe. Pluto stood almost exactly opposite her Jupiter that day. Jupiter is the planet of growth and luck. The name she was given had become the name she chose.

Four months later, in June 1956, she married the writer Arthur Miller. Pluto was still opposite her Jupiter, and Saturn made a square to it too. Big growth and hard work, all at once.

On 19 May 1962 she sang Happy Birthday to President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in New York. The sky was very busy that night. Jupiter and Saturn both touched her Gemini Sun. It was one of her most famous moments on a stage.

In 1959 she won a Golden Globe for the comedy Some Like It Hot. Her last finished film was The Misfits, which came out in 1961. Her marriage to Arthur Miller ended that year.

All through these years she was ill in ways people could not always see. She struggled with sleep, with fear and with low moods. She came to depend on pills and alcohol. Today we know these are illnesses that can be treated, and that help is out there.

Marilyn Monroe died at her home in Los Angeles in August 1962. She was 36. Her death was ruled a probable suicide. If you are ever struggling, talking to someone you trust, or calling a helpline, can help.

The stars did not decide how her life would go. A chart is a map, not a set of orders. What we can say is what astrologers see in it: a quick Gemini mind, an outsider's Moon and a lion's face for the world.

She has been called the most photographed person of the 20th century. But the thing to take away is not the white dress. It is the shy girl with a stutter who kept going to class. She chose her own name. She started her own company. She kept learning until the end.