Ana de Armas doesn't remember a time in her life when Marilyn Monroe wasn't present.

Now, de Armas is playing the legend, or more accurately, she's portraying Norma Jeane Mortenson, the real woman behind the alter ego Marilyn Monroe, in Netflix's Blonde.

De Armas is topless for a significant portion of the film's nearly three-hour running time, and her Marilyn suffers a host of indignities: a rape by Fox studio head Daryl F.

Unlike the film's version of Monroe, she says she felt entirely in control of each of those scenes.

The blowjob scene in particular is likely to raise eyebrows — it has already resulted in a rare NC-17 rating for the film — but de Armas tackled it as if it were all of a piece with the version of Monroe's story that they were telling.

Besides the more explicit aspects of the film, de Armas was tasked with creating both a believable version of Monroe, the Hollywood star, and stripping her down to her essence as Norma Jeane.

"Andrew said to me that I had to choose one moment in the movie where I could show rage and anger," de Armas recounts.

(Dominik created a production bible of nearly 700 images of Monroe, some of which de Armas recreated for the film, along with Monroe's most famous cinematic moments.).

"Her voice changes a lot throughout the years," de Armas notes.

"She was more relaxed because she wasn't being Marilyn," de Armas says.

So much has already been written about this film and de Armas' performance in it, but one thing she says she wants to set the record straight on are reports that she was "haunted" by Monroe.

The actor says it was more just a sense of feeling Monroe's presence.

De Armas says she was determined to give every ounce of herself to her Blonde performance in striving for something true

In talking about Marilyn Monroe — something de Armas has done a lot — she could just as easily be talking about her own high-wire act, and the scrutiny it has received