Simon Monjack

{{short description|English screenwriter, film director and producer (1970–2010)}}

{{redirect-distinguish|Monjack|Monyak Hill{{!}}Monyak|Moniac (disambiguation){{!}}Moniac|Moniack (disambiguation){{!}}Moniack|Moniak (disambiguation){{!}}Moniak}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Simon Monjack

| image = Simon Monjack.jpg

| image_size =

| alt =

| caption = Monjack in March 2010

| birth_name = Simon Mark Monjack

| birth_date = {{birth date|1970|3|9|df=yes}}

| birth_place = Uxbridge, Greater London, England

| death_date = {{death date and age|2010|5|23|1970|3|9|df=yes}}

| death_place = Los Angeles, California, U.S.

| resting_place = Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills

| education = Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe

| alma_mater =

| occupation = Screenwriter, film director, producer

| years_active = 1985–2007

| spouse = {{ubl|{{marriage|Simone Bienne|2001|2006|reason=divorced}}|{{marriage|Brittany Murphy|2007|2009|reason=died}}}}

| children = 2

}}

Simon Mark Monjack (9 March 1970 – 23 May 2010) was an English screenwriter, film director, producer and make-up artist. He was the husband of Brittany Murphy.{{cite news

|url=https://people.com/celebrity/brittany-murphy-marries-writer-director/

|title=Brittany Murphy Marries Writer-Director

|magazine=People

|last=Fleeman

|first=Mike

|date=8 May 2007

}}{{cite news

|url=http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/12/20/brittany.murphy/index.html

|title=Actress Brittany Murphy dead at 32

|publisher=CNN

|date=20 December 2009

|access-date=20 December 2009

}}

Early life

Monjack was born on 9 March 1970 in Hillingdon, Middlesex, to a Jewish family.{{cite web

|url=http://content.ancestry.co.uk/iexec/?htx=List&dbid=8782&offerid=0%3a7858%3a0/ |title=England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916–2005

|access-date=21 December 2009

}} He grew up in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire.{{cite web|first=Lawrence|last=Dunhill|url=http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/8181538.Bucks_husband_of_tragic_Hollywood_star_found_dead/|title=Simon Monjack, Buckinghamshire husband of tragic Hollywood star Brittany Murphy found dead|website=This is Local|date=24 May 2010}} He attended Juniper Hill School, Flackwell Heath, then Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. When he was 16, his father, William (1949–1986), died of a brain tumour.{{cite news|first=Cahal|last=Milmo|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/simon-monjack-the-short-life-and-lonely-death-of-a-showbiz-widower-1981959.html|title=Simon Monjack: The short life and lonely death of a showbiz widower|newspaper=The Independent|date=24 May 2010}}{{Cite web |url=http://www.findmypast.com/BirthsMarriagesDeaths.jsp |title=Deaths England and Wales 1984–2006 |access-date=24 May 2010 |archive-date=4 November 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151104084417/http://www.findmypast.com/BirthsMarriagesDeaths.jsp |url-status=dead }} His mother Linda (née Hall) is a hypnotherapist.{{cite web|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/23/brittany-murphys-mother-i_n_401762.html|title=Brittany Murphy's Mother-In-Law: Simon Monjack Has Lost The Love Of His Life|website=The Huffington Post|date=23 December 2009}}

Career

Monjack directed, produced, and wrote the B movie Two Days, Nine Lives in 2000.{{cite news

|first=Michael

|last=Thomson

|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2001/03/22/two_days_nine_lives_2001_review.shtml

|title=Two Days, Nine Lives (2001)

|publisher=BBC

|date=22 March 2001

|access-date=10 June 2014

}} He received story credit for the 2006 biographical film Factory Girl about Warhol actress/model Edie Sedgwick.{{cite web

|url=http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/who-is-brittany-murphys-husband-20092212

|title=Who Is Brittany Murphy's Husband?

|work=Us Weekly

|date=22 December 2009

|access-date=10 June 2014

}} Director George Hickenlooper contended that "Monjack had nothing to do with Factory Girl" and that "he filed a frivolous lawsuit against us [...] making bogus claims that we had stolen his script. He held us literally hostage and we were forced to settle with him as he held our production over a barrel." Monjack denied these claims.[http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/12/26/2009-12-26_director_brittany_murphy_was_warned_about_husband_simon_monjack_but_did_not_list.html "Director: Brittany Murphy was warned about husband Simon Monjack but did not listen"] New York Daily News. 27 December 2009. Retrieved 30 December 2009. In 2007, E! News reported that Monjack was slated to direct a film adaptation of D. M. Thomas's novel about Sigmund Freud, The White Hotel, with Brittany Murphy cast in a leading role, but the movie was never made.{{cite web

|url=http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b55090_Brittany_Murphy_Made_a_Missus.html

|title=Brittany Murphy Made a Missus

|last=Serpe

|first=Gina

|publisher=E!

|date=8 May 2007

|access-date=22 December 2009

}}

Personal life

= Brittany Murphy marriage and controversy =

Monjack married Simone Bienne in Las Vegas in November 2001; they were divorced in 2006. That year, he met actress Brittany Murphy.{{cite web|url=http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1002/05/lkl.01.html|title=CNN.com – Transcripts|access-date=29 November 2016}} In April 2007, they married in a private Jewish ceremony at their Los Angeles home.{{cite web|first=Gil|last=Kaufman|date=24 May 2010|url=http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1639859/20100524/story.jhtml|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100526143944/http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1639859/20100524/story.jhtml|url-status=dead|archive-date=26 May 2010|title=Brittany Murphy And Simon Monjack: A History Of Their Romance|website=MTV|access-date=29 November 2016}} The couple did not announce their engagement beforehand and rarely made public appearances together before their marriage. On 20 December 2009, Murphy died after collapsing in their bathroom. The cause was later revealed to be pneumonia, with secondary factors of iron-deficiency anaemia and drug intoxication from prescription and over-the-counter drugs.{{cite news|first=Richard|last=Winton|date=5 February 2010|url=http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-brittany-murphy5-2010feb05,0,158855.story|title=Brittany Murphy's death ruled an accident|newspaper=The Los Angeles Times|accessdate=5 February 2010}}

{{quote box|align=left|quote=Simon Monjack was a liar, a cheat, a thief, a sociopath, a con-artist and a narcissist, all wrapped up in one ball of disfunction.|width=260px|source=—Mark Ebner in the 2023 documentary Gone Before Her Time: Brittany Murphy{{sfn|Gone Before Her Time: Brittany Murphy|2023|loc=38:14-38:33}}}}

In the 2021 documentary What Happened, Brittany Murphy?, several of Monjack's colleagues and friends accused him of being responsible for Murphy's physical changes and also of not letting her connect with her family. According to the testimony of his ex-fiancée, Elizabeth Ragsdale, Monjack "was a disturbed individual who was used to conning people and Brittany was one of his latest victims."{{Sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 2|loc=35:25-41:00}} In the two-part miniseries, Ragsdale explained that Monjack told her that he was suffering from spinal cancer and needed shark cartilage treatments to recover.{{Sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 2|loc=35:25-41:00}} It was not until he abandoned her while Ragsdale was pregnant that she contacted Monjack's mother, Linda Monjack, and realized the story was fake.{{Sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 2|loc=35:25-41:00}} Linda, who was interviewed, defended her son in this regard, saying that he had developed extreme paranoia after the death from cancer of her own father, William Monjack: "I certainly don't think he went out and told people he had cancer. I think he believed it."{{Sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 2|loc=31:00-31:49}} Before Monjack met Murphy, he met filmmaker Allison Burnett at a dinner party publicly, where he told the assembled guests that he was a billionaire, had dated Elle Macpherson and Madonna, had a collection of Ferraris, and was dying of brain cancer until he purchased a treatment derived from shark fins that saved his life; however, these theories were later revealed to be lies.{{Sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 2|loc=0:13-2:40}} The media subsequently suspected that Murphy had been duped by a con man.{{Cite web|url=https://celebrity.land/que-paso-brittany-murphy-ofrece-nuevos-y-escalofriantes-detalles/|title=¿Qué pasó, Brittany Murphy? ofrece nuevos y escalofriantes detalles|access-date=2022-03-10|date=11 October 2021|website=Celebrity Land|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220408092857/https://celebrity.land/que-paso-brittany-murphy-ofrece-nuevos-y-escalofriantes-detalles/|archive-date=8 April 2022|language=spanish}} Kathy Najimy recalled: "[People] were scared. Like, "Who was this man and what is happening?".{{Sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 1|loc=50:52-51:00}} "She wanted to marry him, and I said, 'Honey, that's not enough.'"{{sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 1|loc=49:58-50:09}} Another reporter said that her friends and family tried to separate her from Monjack at one point, but their intervention failed.{{Sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 2|loc=24:32-25:02}} After that it was as if she "disappeared," according to her friend Lisa Rieffel:{{Sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 2|loc=25:47-26:04}} "Simon took her away. He made sure no one could get to her."{{Sfn|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 2|loc=25:47-26:04}}

= Legal issues =

In 2005, warrants were issued for Monjack's arrest in Virginia on charges of credit card fraud, but the charges were later dropped.{{cite news

|url=http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/debts_and_arrests_in_husband_dark_PNmUYInEViOpl6tmvlJqdP

|title=Debts and Arrests in Husband's Dark Past

|last=MacIntosh

|first=Jeane

|newspaper=New York Post

|date=22 December 2009

|access-date=22 December 2009

}}

In 2006, Coutts & Co bank successfully sued Monjack, who had been evicted from four homes, for $470,000.

In February 2007, Monjack was arrested and spent nine days in jail, facing deportation, because his visa to the United States had expired.

Death

In January 2010, Monjack's mother, Linda Monjack, told People that her son was "unwell, and the doctors are carrying out tests. On whether he has a heart problem, it is not really for me to say, you must ask him, but yes, there have been health problems in the past. I believe it's common knowledge, and it's been in the press that he had a slight heart attack a week from Brittany's death."{{cite web|first=Stephen M.|last=Silverman|date=24 May 2010 |access-date=24 May 2010 |url=https://people.com/celebrity/brittany-murphys-husband-found-dead/|title=Brittany Murphy's Husband Found Dead |magazine=People}}

Monjack was found dead on 23 May 2010 in his house in Hollywood, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's office. Law enforcement sources say the Los Angeles Fire Department was called there for a medical emergency after Murphy's mother, Sharon, found Monjack unconscious in the master bedroom around 9:20 pm, and then called 911. Paramedics arrived; Monjack was pronounced dead at 9:45 pm.{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/24/simon-monjack-dead-brittany-murphy/ |title=Simon Monjack, husband of Brittany Murphy, dies of heart attack |newspaper=The Guardian |date=24 May 2010 |access-date=24 May 2010 | first=Catherine | last=Shoard}}

The coroner's report found the cause of Monjack's death to be acute pneumonia and severe anaemia, similar to the causes attributed to his wife's death five months earlier in the same house.{{cite news|first=Alan|last=Duke|url=http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/07/21/simon.monjack.autopsy/?hpt=Sbin|title=Coroner finds Simon Monjack's death was similar to Brittany Murphy's |website=CNN |date=21 July 2010|access-date=22 July 2010}} He was buried next to Murphy at Forest Lawn cemetery in the Hollywood Hills.{{cite magazine|title=Simon Monjack Laid to Rest Next to Brittany Murphy|first=Lorenzo|last=Benet|date=27 May 2010|url=https://people.com/celebrity/simon-monjack-laid-to-rest-next-to-brittany-murphy/|magazine=People}}

References

=Cites=

{{Cite web |title=What Happened, Brittany Murphy? |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14396056/ |website=IMDb |date=October 14, 2021|access-date=7 October 2023}}
{{Cite web |title=Episode 1 |ref={{harvid|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 1}}|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15289606/?ref_=ttep_ep2 |website=IMDb}}
{{Cite web |title=Episode 2 |ref={{harvid|What Happened, Brittany Murphy?|Episode 2}}|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15289606/?ref_=ttep_ep2 |website=IMDb}}
{{cite web|access-date=7 October 2023 |archive-date=29 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230429004702/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ie_MG3KKc&gl=US&hl=en |date=18 April 2023 |ref={{harvid|Gone Before Her Time: Brittany Murphy|2023}} |title=Gone Before Her Time: Brittany Murphy |type=TV documentary |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ie_MG3KKc |website=Tubi }}