(Original headline: Canadian rocker claims to be Marilyn Monroe reincarnated )
She was 12, insists Sherrie Lea Laird, when she suddenly realized she was the reincarnated Marilyn Monroe.
“I remember that vividly,” says Laird, recalling a flash of recognition when her aunt began singing Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. “This has been a long time coming. It’s not a novelty thing.”
The 43-year-old singer from Toronto is on the phone from a gas station in Las Vegas, en route to a scheduled Friday book launch in Hollywood that — hello, Oprah — has already prompted a 2,000-word, photo-filled splash about Laird’s claims in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times.
“I’m not crazy, and anybody who knows me will tell you that,” says Laird, lead singer of a Canadian rock band called Pandamonia, which performed a Canada Day gig in Ottawa last month.
“I know some people will say I’m doing this for the band. If that was true, I would have done it 10 or 20 years ago. This could ruin my career.”
Laird’s story is being told by her California psychiatrist Adrian Finkelstein, author of Marilyn Monroe Returns: The Healing of a Soul. The book, officially released on Friday but already available through amazon.com, is Finkelstein’s defence of the controversial therapy known as “past life regression” and a detailed account of his Canadian patient’s discovery of her previous existence as the Hollywood icon.
The L.A. Times article concedes that “many will find the claim outlandish,” but lists Finkelstein’s considerable credentials — including an association with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center — and quotes the doctor as saying: “In science, and I’m a scientist, we end up believing in what we prove scientifically. I established through research that Sherrie Lea Laird is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.”
Cue the talk-show invites and the tabloid photographers, who are likely to show up en masse at the book launch and when Laird visits Monroe’s crypt at a Los Angeles cemetery on Saturday, the 44th anniversary of the star’s death on Aug. 5, 1962.
The 36-year-old actress is believed to have died of a drug overdose, but the public’s enduring fascination with her has spawned countless theories about Monroe being murdered, perhaps because of mob connections or her alleged love affair with then-U.S. president John F. Kennedy.
Laird was born in Scotland in 1963 and emigrated to Canada when she was about six.
Finkelstein’s book describes hypnosis sessions in which Laird — supposedly speaking as Monroe — discusses trysts with Kennedy and his brother Robert, but lays to rest any conspiracy theories about her death.
Last fall, during a therapy session in Toronto that Finkelstein recounts in his book, the hypnotized Laird was apparently asked about the night Monroe died.
“Was it an accident, or were you murdered in this life as Marilyn?” the doctor prompts. “And, if so, by whom?”
“By me,” Laird is said to have replied. “I’m not murdered.”
Laird told CanWest News Service on Wednesday that she was “shocked” by the huge Times story, which also ran in several other U.S. newspapers. She said she’s bracing for a flood of media calls after Friday’s book launch.
Laird admitted she was somewhat annoyed at the number of personal details Finkelstein reveals about her in the book — particularly her true age.
“I like people thinking I’m in my twenties,” said Laird, who will receive a percentage of the book’s profits. “I lie about that all the time.”
