Kelli Garner to Play Marilyn Monroe in Lifetime Miniseries

Kelli Garner, whose acting credits include Pan Am and The Aviator, has scored the role of Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe in an upcoming miniseries on Lifetime. She will star opposite Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, who will play Monroe’s mentally ill mother.

The four-hour miniseries, titled Marilyn, will be based on the biography The Secret Life Of Marilyn Monroe by J. Randy Taraborrelli. It will focus on Monroe’s family life and how she succeeded in hiding from an all-too-invasive world.

Here is Lifetime’s official synopsis for the drama series:

“Marilyn is both the personification of sex, whose first marriage ironically collapses because of her frigidity, and a fragile artist who seeks the approval and protection of men. But after tumultuous marriages with Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, she realizes she has the strength to stand on her own. She becomes the face and voice of an era, yet wants most of all to be someone’s mother and someone’s little girl. She’s the Marilyn you haven’t seen before, the artist who, by masking the truth with an image, gives her greatest performance.”

Stephen Kronish wrote the script, and Laurie Collyer will serve as director.

Marilyn is set to premiere in 2015.