June 1 Is The 100th Anniversary Of Marilyn Monroe’s Birth
What Would Marilyn Look Like Today?
Marilyn Monroe in New York City sitting by a fountain. c 1955 photo Sam Shaw
The odds that any female movie legend reaches the age of 100 are extremely slim.
Currently Eva Marie Saint (On The Waterfront; North By Northwest) is 101. Lee Grant (In The Heat of the Night; Shampoo) is 100. Olivia de Havilland lived to 104. Gloria Stuart (Titanic, The Invisible Man) was 100 when she died. If movie stars do reach the magic age of 100 they generally stay out of the spotlight and will not allow photographs to be taken of them.
Had Marilyn Monroe not died at age 36 on August 4, 1962, it is unlikely she would have lived to be 100-years-old. Life expectancy actuarial tables bear this out. Marilyn’s documented medical issues, both physical and mental, would be another longevity barrier, Speculating what Marilyn would look like at 100 is preposterous.
But why should that stop Artificial Intelligence programs from creating an image of what Marilyn would look like at age 100?
Marilyn Monroe 2026 AI photo edited
If Marilyn Had Aged
Marilyn Monroe’s mother- Gladys Pearl Monroe Baker Mortensen Eley c 1970s.
Gladys Baker Eley July 6 , 1963 photo: AP
Marilyn’s mother Gladys Monroe Baker lived until 1984, dying at the age of 81.
These two photographs of Gladys, one at the age of 60 as she is being accompanied back to a sanitarium and another when she was in her seventies, gives you some idea of what Marilyn’s genetics were like and how Marilyn might have looked as she aged.
We loaded vintage Marilyn Monroe source photographs from our collection and asked a few AI photo editing programs to create images of Marilyn at age 100.
How realistic is this experiment?
The results range from semi-realistic to flattering to optimistic to no resemblance and ridiculous.
Most of the photo editing programs tend to age Marilyn with an overall healthy look and no weight gain. Considering Marilyn’s dependency on alcohol and drugs, the graceful ageing and health trajectory are not in line with that lifestyle.
Of course Marilyn who was always a fitness buff, may have broken those habits had she lived.
The AI photo editing software also generate a Marilyn who appears to have undergone plastic surgery and does not look like a typical 100-year-old woman. That may be realistic, as you look at recent photographs of movie stars currently in their nineties. i.e. Joan Collins; Kim Novak; Ursula Andress; Carroll Baker etc.
