Selena Gomez was turned into a blonde bombshell in an homage to the iconic Marilyn Monroe. The singer – who will next star with Steve Martin in the series Only Murders In The Building – landed the cover of ELLE ‘s September 2021 issue is the brand’s first-ever Latinx issue, which will be on newsstands August 31.
Stunning! Selena Gomez was turned into a blonde bombshell in the vein of pinup Marilyn Monroe of How To Marry A Millionaire and Niagara fame for her latest photo shoot.
Saucy: Selena revealed that she has felt objectified at certain points in her career, which she said ‘felt gross for a long time’. She also talked about the pressure to look perfect and the part social media plays. In 2017, she deleted her Instagram account from her phone. Now, she says it helped her with her mental health: ‘I don’t have it on my phone, so there’s no temptation. I suddenly had to learn how to be with myself.’
Her inspiration: American actress, singer, model legend Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s.
Next up for Selena, in regard to her acting career, is the series Only Murders In The Building, alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short. On working with Gomez, Short said: ‘She’s a brilliant actress. And there’s an immediate warmth and loveliness to her.’
Selena also impressed Steve Martin, too. ‘Marty and I were both knocked out by her understanding that quiet acting is powerful acting,’ he says, adding, ‘Marty doesn’t yet understand this.’ Gomez loved working with the older actors. ‘I got to be in a space with so much wisdom. They became my uncles.’ Martin echoed the sentiment: ‘We ended up feeling very close to Selena.’
Big romance: Selena has had to deal with being in the public eye since her career took off 2007 when she starred on Wizards of Waverly Place on Disney. Then, in 2011, she started dating Justin Bieber, which set off a whirlwind of rumors centered around the young couple. Pictured: Selena and Justin in LA in 2012.
Selena shared with Elle that she had felt pressure to act beyond her years. In 2020, she shared a similar sentiment to Allure, stating that she felt she had to play the role of a siren when she was young. ‘I just did things that weren’t really me. There was pressure to seem more adult on my album, Revival … I really don’t think I was [that] person,’ she said. Selena was 23 when the album released in 2015.
From the heart: Also in the issue, Selena talked about how she has had struggle after struggle, which should have torn her down. ‘My lupus, my kidney transplant, chemotherapy, having a mental illness, going through very public heartbreaks – these were all things that honestly should have taken me down,’ Selena told Carina Chocano.
Too much to take: Sometimes it was overwhelming. ‘Every time I went through something, I was like, What else? What else am I going to have to deal with?’ added the red carpet favorite. And then she realized there was a reason for her pain: ‘You’re going to help people. That’s really what kept me going. There could have been a time when I wasn’t strong enough, and would have done something to hurt myself,’ she shared.
Gomez, who embraced her Latinx heritage in her work in a big way this year, is releasing her first Spanish-language album, Revelación and producing and starring in the upcoming biopic In the Shadow of the Mountain, about Peruvian mountain climber Silvia Vásquez-Lavado. She worked with a Spanish coach for the career moves: ‘I made sure that I didn’t look like a fool.’ The Texas native added: ‘I focused so hard on making sure that the language I was speaking, and the way I was speaking it, was authentic’.
