LOS ANGELES: Signing up a Hollywood actress as the face of a beauty brand is common practice nowadays. But Max Factor has taken the unusual step of appointing a star who has been dead for over half a century.

Marilyn Monroe has been unveiled as the company’s “global glamor ambassador” and will star in its 2015 advertising campaigns.

They will highlight the role make-up played in transforming mousey Norma Jeane Mortenson into the blonde bombshell of Some Like It Hot and The Seven Year Itch.

Monroe was a Max Factor client in the 1940s, when the brand had a beauty parlor on Hollywood Boulevard and catered to the starlets of the day. According to the company, it was Max Factor Jr, then president of the company, who was responsible for Monroe’s trademark look (although it was Sylvia Barnhart, a colorist at another salon, who first dyed Monroe’s hair blonde).

“Marilyn made the sultry red lip, creamy skin and dramatically-lined eyes the most famous beauty look of the 1940s and it’s a look that continues to dominate the beauty and fashion industry.