Marilyn Monroe, tortured poet

Though she was known for her beauty and not her brains, Marilyn Monroe was apparently no slouch: she quoted John Milton and wrote poetry of her own. A collection of the iconic star's diary entries, poems and letters left to her acting teacher Lee Strasberg are to be published this month in a book titled Fragments, reports the New York Daily News:

Poetry written by Monroe as her star was on the rise were laments about loneliness - and filled with despair.

"How I would like to be dead, absolutely nonexistent," she wrote.

By 1961, Monroe was really unraveling. "I am sure I will finish mad if I stay in this nightmare," she wrote Strasberg after a stint in a New York psychiatric clinic. She described an attempted overdose by saying she swallowed the pills "with relief."

Monroe's death in 1962 at age 36 was ruled a suicide.