Getting to Know Michelle Pfeiffer

Thirty-five years have passed since Susie Diamond sang 'Makin' Whoopee' atop a grand piano in Steve Kloves's The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). But, as Cinema Paradiso discovers, this is just one of the many highlights in the career of Michelle Pfeiffer.

'I've always had this very love-hate relationship with acting,' Michelle Pfeiffer recently told The Hollywood Reporter. Such is her habit of trying to back out of projects that her agents call her 'Dr No'. She concedes, 'I'll be like, "Oh, I can't possibly do this for some crazy reason," some insurmountable thing that's really not insurmountable.'

She's no easier on herself once she's on the set and she can't bear watching the daily rushes because she always spots flaws. Finished films are rarely watched more than once. Nevertheless, Pfeiffer has three Academy Award nominations and eight Golden Globe nods to her credit. She has also won a Globe and a BAFTA, and been nominated for an Emmy. Moreover, her films have amassed $7 billion worldwide.

Preferring drama to comedy, Pfeiffer eschews glamorous roles and relishes characters with a dark side. During her 44-year career, she has made 50 features and worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Yet, such is her beauty, versatility and humility that she's sometimes overlooked as one of the finest actresses of her generation. Cinema Paradiso seeks to set the record straight.

That Cantaloupe Moment

Coming between brother Reed and sisters, Dedee and Lori, Michelle Marie Pfeiffer was born in Santa Ana, California on 29 April 1958. Her parents were originally from North Dakota, with father Richard being an air-conditioning contractor and mother Donna being a homemaker. Remaining in Orange County, the Pfeiffers moved seven miles to Midway City, when Michelle was young. But other information about her early years is hard to come by, as Pfeiffer is so fiercely protective of her privacy.

'I was a tomboy,' Pfeiffer told People magazine in 1999. 'When I was a kid I would go out into the garage and I'd find my dad's tools, and I'd find an old block of wood and some nails, and some duct tape, and I would create things. I could stay out all day by myself. I made a pair of shoes out of duct tape and cardboard. I was very, very pleased with those shoes.'

She revealed in an interview with director Darren Aronofsky, 'I must have been a very dramatic child. Because my mother used to call me "my little actress".' However, Pfeiffer has also confessed to being a handful, who used to beat up the boys who teased her. 'I was like the Mafia don of my elementary school,' she joked. She found life at Fountain Valley High School no more to her liking, as she used to bunk off and hang out with the surfing crowd on Huntington Beach. As she admitted in one interview, 'I think I gave my parents a lot of grey hair.'

Pfeiffer had no inclinations to act while growing up. 'I didn't really even go to the movies much,' she recalled. 'My mother didn't drive. My father couldn't be bothered. So, I didn't really go anywhere. But what I did do is I would stay up really late watching old movies on television. I can't even tell you what they were because I was so young. But I remember watching what they were doing and saying to myself, "I can do that."' When she did eventually join her high school drama class, it was to boost her credits. But she remembers feeling happier there than in most other lessons.

Graduating in 1976. Pfeiffer got a job at the local Vons supermarket, where the decent pay enabled her to enjoy a little independence. However, an encounter with a tetchy customer over a melon prompted the 18 year-old to reassess where she was heading. 'I really owe my career to that woman who was upset about her cantaloupes,' Pfeiffer has claimed, as she realised that she wanted to act.

Having enrolled at Golden West College, Pfeiffer studied to become a court stenographer. But when her hairdresser informed her that a talent agent was among the judges at the Miss Orange County beauty pageant, she decided to enter. She won and came sixth in the 1978 Miss California contest. 'Where I came from,' Pfeiffer explained, 'the idea of going into showbusiness was just ridiculous; in fact I didn't tell anybody because I knew people would laugh at me. So I sort of snuck around and got some pictures and got a resumé together and, of course, lied and said I did all kinds of things I didn't do.'

Having frequently butted heads in the past with her father, the equally stubborn Pfeiffer had a job convincing him that she was making the right decision. According to Pfeiffer, he had 'a few choice words to say about it, but once he saw how determined I was...He knew before I did that there was a commitment there that he'd never seen before. And he supported me wholeheartedly.' Next stop, Hollywood!

The Road to Rydell

Despite being uncomfortable with trading on her looks, Pfeiffer took whatever was offered on arriving in Los Angeles. She made her acting debut as Athena opposite Ricardo Montalbán's Mr Roarke and Hervé Villechaize's Tattoo in 'The Flight of the Great Yellow Bird/The Island of Lost Women', a 1978 Season Two episode of Fantasy Island (1977-84). Clearly, she made a good impression, as she was invited back in 1981 to take the role of Deborah Dare in 'Elizabeth's Baby/The Artist and the Lady'.

In the meantime, she played 'The Bombshell' in 12 episodes of Delta House (1979), which was spun off from John Landis's National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). She also notched up 10 episodes as Samantha 'Sunshine' Jensen in B.A.D. Cats (1980), and two more as Joy in Enos (1980-81), which followed the fortunes of Enos Strate (Sonny Shroyer) between his stints in The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-85). Cinema Paradiso users can also see Pfeiffer as Jobina in 'The Watch Commander', a 1979 Series 3 episode of CHiPs (1977-83).

Following a Lux soap commercial (which can be found online), Pfeiffer landed her first TV-movie, when she was cast as Tricia in British director John Llewellyn Moxey's The Solitary Man (1979). Further teleplay parts followed in Splendor in the Grass, The Children Nobody Wanted, and Callie & Son, (all 1981). The latter starred Lindsay Wagner as Callie, a Texan mother who is so protective of son Randy (Jameson Parker) that she wholly disapproves of his romance with Sue Lynn (Pfeiffer).

By this time, Pfeiffer had made her feature bow, as Susie Q, alongside fellow debutant, Tony Danza, in Floyd Mutrux's The Hollywood Knights, which chronicled the Halloween antics of a 1965 high-school car club. She followed this romp by playing Sue Wellington, the younger version of Susannah York's character in Steven Paul's Falling in Love Again (both 1980), which co-starred Elliot Gould.

However, she was struggling to make her name and her agent conceded 'she couldn't get any jobs. Nobody wanted to hire her.' Pfeiffer herself admitted, 'I was playing bimbos and cashing in on my looks.' The struggle diminished her self-esteem and a couple of personal trainers exploited her vulnerability. 'They worked with weights,' she recalled, 'and put people on diets and their thing was vegetarianism. They were very controlling.' She continued, 'I wasn't living with them but I was there a lot and they were always telling me I needed to come more. I had to pay for all the time I was there, so it was financially very draining. And...You know, putting me on a diet that nobody can adhere to.'

By all accounts, the pair had their followers aspire to becoming breatharians. However, help was at hand in the form of actor Peter Horton, who had met Pfeiffer at Milton Katselas's acting classes at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. He was about to play a cult member in Bill Persky's Serial (1980) and Pfeiffer assisted in his preparation. 'I was helping him to do research on this cult,' she told an interviewer, 'and I realised - I was in one! We were talking with an ex-Moonie and he was describing the psychological manipulation and I just clicked.'

'I was brainwashed,' she reflected, 'I gave them an enormous amount of money.' But during the meeting with the deprogrammer, 'it was like a light bulb went off, and I never went back'. Instead, Pfeiffer started dating Horton and joined forces with Peter Ustinov in Clive Donner's Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981). She played Cordelia Farenington, the fiancée of the detective's No.1 Son (Richard Hatch). However, this turned out to be the last film featuring Earl Derr Biggers's Honolulu sleuth, as Ustinov followed Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and Roland Winters in acting in yellowface and no one has touched the tainted role since.

Although the whodunit co-starring Angie Dickinson and Lee Grant bombed, Pfeiffer tied the knot with Horton in Santa Monica on 5 October 1981. While they were on their honeymoon, Pfeiffer learned that she had landed the leading role of Stephanie Zinone in Grease 2 (1982), which was directed by Patricia Birch, who had choreographed the 1971 stage show that came to the screen as Randal Kleiser's Grease (1978). It was always going to be a tough ask for Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield to follow in the footsteps of Olivia Newton John and John Travolta. But, while the film flopped en route to acquiring cult status, it prompted the New York Times to opine, 'although she is a relative screen newcomer, Miss Pfeiffer manages to look much more insouciant and comfortable than anyone else in the cast'.

She had auditioned at Horton's suggestion rather than take up another 'sexy role' on television. 'I was doing my normal torture dance,' Pfeiffer remembered, 'whether or not I should do it, and he just read it and went, "I never really saw you this way, I always pictured you more like Katharine Hepburn." And it stuck. I realised that I did, too, I just wasn't confident enough to see that through.'

Four years later, Horton would direct Pfeiffer as Alice, the high school girlfriend of Val Kilmer's alcoholic student in the TV special, One Too Many (1985). They would also act together for the only time time in their careers as new parents questioning the capability of Griffin Dunne's doctor in the 'Hospital' segment of John Landis's skit compilation, Amazon Women on the Moon (1987). Horton was about to start playing Gary Shepherd in thirtysomething (1987-91), but Pfeiffer had already taken sizeable steps towards becoming one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

Real Contribution to Human History

Although it had raised her profile, Grease 2 almost cost Pfeiffer her breakthrough role. Brian De Palma had been less than enthused on seeing the musical and was about to look elsewhere for the role of Elvira Hancock in Scarface (1983). But producer Martin Bregman insisted she was cast and she stole scenes from a full-throttled Al Pacino as Tony Montana's coke-addicted moll. That said, Pfeiffer has since said she found the shoot highly stressful and kept expecting to be fired. 'I remember when I did Scarface,' she confessed, 'I was so young, I had no idea who this person [I was playing] was. I really relied on the women around me, my makeup artist and my hairdresser, people who had had more life experience, to tell me who she was. I was clueless.'

Not everyone was impressed by this bloody reworking of Howard Hawks's Scarface (1932). But critic Pauline Kael deemed Pfeiffer 'paradisically beautiful', while Time's Richard Corliss wrote: 'Most of the large cast is fine; Michelle Pfeiffer is better. The cool, druggy Wasp woman who does not fit into Tony's world, Pfeiffer's Elvira is funny and pathetic, a street angel ready at any whim to float away on another cocaine cloud.' Pfeiffer was less convinced. 'Some of the performances I have felt the best about are ones for which I've gotten panned,' she confided to one interviewer. 'The ones that make me cringe are typically when I got the best reviews. I saw Scarface and I went, "Eh, I'm okay." I rarely like my work. I only look at films once. It's just too painful.'

After a tricky few years, Pfeiffer had come to the fore. However, she took a step backwards in John Landis's Into the Night, as Diana, the jewel smuggler who entangles Jeff Goldblum's insomniac aerospace engineer in a madcap caper. While she handled the femme fatale aspect capably, Pfeiffer found the comedy harder and she sought refuge in Richard Donner's fantasy, Ladyhawke (both 1985). Set in medieval Italy, the story centres on the alliance thief Phillipe Gaston (Matthew Broderick) forges with soldier Etienne of Navarre (Rutger Hauer) to prevent Isabeau d'Anjou (Pfeiffer) from being captured by the wicked Bishop of Aquila (John Wood).

Comedy beckoned again, as Pfeiffer plays Method actress Faith Healy opposite Michael Caine's blowhard Elliott James in Alan Alda'sSweet Liberty (1986). Alda co-stars as an historian whose novel has been turned into a bawdy barnstormer by screenwriter Bob Hoskins and hack director, Saul Rubinek. Also notable is Lillian Gish, in her penultimate picture (after her debut in 1912), as Alda's delusional mother, who believes that Satan has taken over her kitchen.

Curiously, a devillish presence enlivened Pfeiffer's next outing, as lothario Daryl Van Horn (Jack Nicholson) descends upon a sleepy Rhode Island town in George Miller's adaptation of John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick (1987). Among those seduced by the cad are sculptor Alexandra Medford (Cher), music teacher Jane Spofford (Susan Sarandon), and columnist and mother of six, Sukie Ridgement (Pfeiffer). In extremis, however, the women discover they have untapped powers in common.

'When I met her,' Cher recalled of the shoot, 'I thought she was very soft and maybe too sweet, too nice. But, you know, it's all part of someone who has a definite purpose, who's a lot stronger than even she knows sometimes...It's not possible to mess with her and come out on top.' Pfeiffer certainly knew her worth after this picture rang bells at the box office. But she had one last minor league outing on the books, Paul Bogart's Tales From the Hollywood Hills: Natica Jackson, which is available from Cinema Paradiso as Power, Passion and Murder (1987). Once again exhibiting her darker side, Pfeiffer plays a 1930s movie star whose reckless fling with a married producer forces her to take desperate measures in order to salvage her reputation and her career.

Changing tack again, Pfeiffer donned a curly brunette wig and perfected a Brooklyn accent to play murdered gangster's widow, Angela de Marco, in Jonathan Demme's Married to the Mob (1988). Desperate to save her son from a life of crime, however, Angela finds herself at odds with boss Tony 'the Tiger' Russo (Dean Stockwell), his jealous wife, Connie (Mercedes Ruehl), and FBI agent, Mike Downey (Matthew Modine). Stockwell would receive a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for his performance, while Pfeiffer would embark upon a six-year run of being recognised at the Golden Globes.

However, 1988 also brought one of her least enjoyable experiences, as she failed to connect with the role of Jo Ann Vallenari, the restaurant owner who comes between Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell in Robert Towne's Tequila Sunrise. Towne subsequently dubbed Pfeiffer 'the most difficult' actress he ever worked with. But she resented having to bare her behind and later remarked, 'I had a hard time playing that part. It was very limited as far as what I could do. She's a very controlled sort of person; I don't find those roles fun to play.'

While she was regretting her choice, Stephen Frears (who is the subject of one of Cinema Paradiso's Instant Expert articles) was learning a lesson in jumping to conclusions. While preparing Dangerous Liaisons (1988), he had viewed The Witches of Eastwick. 'I don't remember the film at all,' he disclosed, 'just watching her and thinking, "This woman is rather dignified and can look after herself. She's all right." Then I went to Hollywood to meet her. And I thought, "This is a proper text and she is an Orange County checkout girl – I'd better get her to read for it." So she came in and read, rather badly. But something in her registered. I remember sitting on the floor and thinking, "Oh, I can see that men would fall in love with her."'

Two days later, however, Demme showed Frears two reels from Married to the Mob. 'That's when I realised she was brilliant,' he conceded, 'and that I was a complete idiot - you know, what was I thinking?' Without further hesitation, Pfeiffer was cast as Madame Marie de Tourvel, opposite Glenn Close's Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil and John Malkovich's Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont in Christopher Hampton's impeccable interpretation of the same 1792 novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos that would inspire Miloš Forman's Valmont (1989).

Still prone to bouts of self-doubt, Pfeiffer found the role daunting. 'I jump in feet first,' she reflected, 'and then I realise what I've gotten myself into, but I refuse, refuse, to allow myself to sink.' Frears wasn't always sure about what he was getting on the soundstage. But he soon realised that Pfeiffer is 'extremely firmly centered and has a very strong sense of truth about what she's doing. You can't get her to do a false thing.' Moreover, he also discovered that she is the kind of performer who 'just sort of grows in the cans of film. It's as if there are things stored-up inside of her which gradually come out as you edit. She seems born to be in the movies. She just has this wonderfully expressive face. She's what it must have been like, I expect...sort of like what Garbo was.'

Critics, audiences, and awards voters evidently concurred, as Pfeiffer received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and won the BAFTA in the same category. Co-star John Malkovich was also bewitched and the pair fell into an affair that ended Pfeiffer's marriage. Equally tempestuous relationships followed with Fisher Stevens and Michael Keaton. But Pfeiffer's star was firmly in the ascendant and her next role would become one of her most iconic.

The Reluctant Superstar

Depending on who you talk to, the Bridges brothers and Pfeiffer were always going to star in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) or Bill Murray and Chevy Chase were going to tinkle the ivories for Whitney Houston, Jodie Foster, Debra Winger, or Jennifer Jason Leigh. Madonna apparently found the material too mushy, but writer-director Steve Kloves recalls plumping for Pfeiffer because she was married to one of his closest friends. 'We both smoked at the time,' he explained, 'so we would go into the kitchen to smoke and talk, and that's how I got to know her. When it was decided that I was the guy to direct the movie, I offered it to Michelle, and it took me about a week to convince her to do it.'

Pfeiffer spent four months doing intensive vocal training and studying the style of jazz singers Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Rickie Lee Jones, Billie Holiday, and Helen Merrill, which paid off when critic Roger Ebert compared her to Rita Hayworth in Charles Vidor's Gilda (1946) and Marilyn Monroe in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959). In his review, he declared that this sophisticated saga would be 'one of the movies they will use as a document, years from now, when they begin to trace the steps by which Pfeiffer became a great star'.

When it came to awards season, Pfeiffer swept the board of the major critics circles, while also landing the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. Oscar and BAFTA nominations followed, although Pfeiffer lost out to Jessica Tandy in Bruce Beresford's Driving Miss Daisy (1989). But the success came at a price. 'Suddenly everybody knew who I was, and it terrified me,' Pfeiffer lamented. 'Every minute of every day, you feel as if a million eyes are on you. You're never allowed to just be yourself. And for me, it's not worth it. I don't know how long I can take it. I don't even know if I want to.'

Compensation came in the form of her new $1 million fee and the chance to act in the first Hollywood film shot primarily in the Soviet Union. Adapted from a John Le Carré novel, Fred Schepisi's The Russia House (1990) cast Pfeiffer as Katya Orlova, a mother who delivers a manuscript containing Soviet nuclear secrets to Sean Connery's British publisher. Her creditable Russian accent earned her another Golden Globe nomination and a reunion with Al Pacino in Garry Marshall's Frankie and Johnny (1991), which reworked Terrence McNally's off-Broadway hit, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Kathy Bates was miffed at missing out on the chance to recreate her role and critics questioned Pfeiffer's contention that she had a right to defy public expectation by playing an emotionally scarred Altoona waitress.

She received another Golden Globe nomination, but missed out on the chance to co-star with Warren Beatty in Bugsy. As it was, Annette Bening was cast and an enduring romance blossomed. As Cinema Paradiso users can discover from Anthony Uro's The Silence of the Lambs: The Inside Story (2010), Pfeiffer also turned down the part of Clarice Starling that brought Jodie Foster an Oscar in Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (both 1991). Claiming to be 'trepidatious' because 'there was such evil in that film', Pfeiffer put the project on a reject pile with Garry Marshall's Pretty Woman, Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise (both 1990), Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct (1992), and Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle (1993). 'I don't really think in terms of what's commercial and what's not, because I'm a really bad judge of that,' Pfeiffer joked to one journalist. 'I don't have an innate commercial nous. I'm always wrong.'

Ironically, Bening's pregnancy led to Pfeiffer taking over the role of Selina Kyle in Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992). Having seen off competition from Ellen Barkin, Cher, Bridget Fonda, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Madonna, Lena Olin, Susan Sarandon, Raquel Welch, Kim Basinger, Sean Young, and onetime TV Catwoman, Julie Newmar, Pfeiffer trained in martial arts and kickboxing in order to wreak revenge on Gotham City tycoon and former boss Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) after he had tried to kill her. Such was the clinging nature of the black latex Catwoman costume that Pfeiffer had to be covered in baby powder to put it on. Over 50 were created at $1000 a pop because they couldn't be reused.

Earning $3 million for the role, Pfeiffer also mastered how to use a whip and was rewarded with glowing reviews. According to co-star Michael Keaton, 'She pulled off the almost impossible combo of sexy, ironic, tragic, dangerous and just plain good.' Time magazine would concur in opining that Pfeiffer had become 'a masterly portrayer of women with demons'.

Eager to avoid typecasting, Pfeiffer had founded Via Rosa Productions in 1990 with Kate Guinzburg. The first project was Jonathan Kaplan's Love Field (1992), in which Pfeiffer played Lurene Hallett, a fan of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who decides to travel from Dallas to Washington DC after President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in November 1963. Using the racial tensions of the time to comment on the contemporary state of the nation, the action comes to focus on Lurene's friendship with Paul Cayter (Dennis Haysbert), a Black father who is travelling with the young daughter (Stephanie McFadden) he has just liberated from an orphanage.

Once again, Pfeiffer received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, as well as the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival. But this well-meaning drama was little seen. By contrast, Martin Scorsese's take on Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1993) proved a surprising box-office success in chronicling the fallout when 1870s New York socialite May Welland (Winona Ryder) suggests that lawyer fiancé Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) should represent her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Pfeiffer), who has returned home after a disastrous marriage to a decadent Polish nobleman.

Once again, Pfeiffer drew a Golden Globe nomination to go with the Elvira Notari Prize she had won at the Venice Film Festival. But this would be her last major success of the decade, as she dropped out of Alan Parker's Evita (1996) and couldn't raise the funding for a biopic of artist Georgia O'Keeffe. She also had off-screen distractions. Shortly after deciding to adopt a newborn baby, Pfeiffer went bowling on a blind date with David E. Kelley, the television writer and producer who had worked on L.A. Law (1986-93), Doogie Howser, MD (1989-93), and Picket Fences (1992-96) and would go on to become better known as the brains behind Chicago Hope (1994-2000), Ally McBeal (1997-2002), The Practice (1997-2004), Boston Legal (2004-08), and Big Little Lies (2017-19). They married on the day Claudia Rose was christened in 1993 and welcomed brother John Henry Kelley II the following year.

Opting for projects that allowed her to remain close to home, Pfeiffer made consecutive pictures under the Via Rosa banner. She reunited with Jack Nicholson in Mike Nichols's Wolf (1994) to play Laura Alden, the daughter of a publishing tycoon whose new editor-in-chief has been bitten by a werewolf. Doing better business than the critics had predicted, this stylish, if patchy chiller was followed by Dangerous Minds (1995), John N. Smith's adaptation of teacher and former US Marine LouAnne Johnson's memoir, My Posse Don't Do Homework. In addition to playing Johnson, Pfeiffer also appeared in the MTV Award-winning video for Coolio's 'Gangsta's Paradise', which formed part of the soundtrack. She also took the decision to cut the scenes featuring Andy Garcia as her love interest in order to retain the focus on Johnson's battle to connect with her seemingly unteachable students.

Questions were raised about whether Robert Redford was too old to romance Pfeiffer's Sally Attwater in Jon Avnet's Up Close & Personal (1996), which sees a Miami TV station manager take an aspiring news anchor under his wing. Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne provided the screenplay, while David E. Kelley adapted Michael Brady's play, To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, for director Michael Pressman. Set in Nantucket, the story turns on the efforts of the late Gillian Hills to coax her grieving husband (Peter Gallagher) into moving on with his life, while consoling their confused daughter (Claire Danes).

Neither film did particularly well, although Pfeiffer bounced back in another Via Rosa production, Michael Hoffman's One Fine Day (1996). Among the first films to use mobile phones as a major plot point, this slick romcom sees divorced mother and architect Melanie Parker become entangled with New York Daily News reporter Jack Taylor (George Clooney) after they unexpectedly find themselves supervising their kids on a school day. While this became a popular date movie, Pfeiffer's efforts to go upmarket in a couple of Via Rosa outings failed to find favour. She's typically assured as Rose Cook Lewis, opposite Jessica Lange and Jennifer Jason Leigh, in Jocelyn Moorhouse's adaptation of Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres (1997).

Ulu Grosbard's The Deep End of the Ocean (1998) also came from a literary source, as Jacquelyn Mitchard's bestseller had been the first title chosen for Oprah Winfrey's Book Club. Once again, Pfeiffer is well cast as Beth Cappadora, the mother who becomes convinced that she has found the son who had been kidnapped as a toddler nine years earlier. But the reviews were merely polite, as they were about her display as Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, in Michael Hoffman's take on William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which co-starred Rupert Everett as Oberon, Kevin Kline as weaver Nick Bottom, and Stanley Tucci as the mischievous Puck.

Few were bowled over, however, by Pfeiffer's teaming with Bruce Willis as Ben and Katie Jordan, the 15-year marrieds whose blissful existence is a sham that neither can abide in Rob Reiner's The Story of Us (both 1999). But she was feted for voicing Tzipporah, the shepherdess who becomes the wife of Moses (voiced by Val Kilmer), in Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells's The Prince of Egypt (1998), an animated musical retelling of the Book of Exodus that saw Pfeiffer perform Stephen Schwartz's Oscar-winning song, 'When You Believe'.

Time Out

At the turn of the millennium, Pfeiffer decided to spend more time with her young family. Relocating to northern California, she handed control of Via Rosa to Guinzburg and passed the lead opposite Antonio Banderas in Michael Christofer's Original Sin (2001) to Angelina Jolie. Instead, she paired with Harrison Ford in Robert Zemeckis's What Lies Beneath (2000), a Hitchcockian chiller in which empty nest cellist Claire Spencer and her scientist husband, Norman, begin to suspect that their Vermont neighbour has murdered his wife.

While this raked in a global gross of $291 million, the reviews were lukewarm. However, they positively glowed compared to those for Pfeiffer's performance as lawyer Rita Harrison Williams in Jessie Nelson's I Am Sam (2001). Indeed, while Sean Penn received an Oscar nomination for his work as an intellectually disabled barista, Pfeiffer was informed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that she had been so 'stymied by the bland clichés that prop up her screechy role' that she had delivered 'her flattest, phoniest performance ever'. SF Gate proved even more merciless: 'In one scene, she breaks down in tears as she unburdens herself to him about her miserable life. It's hard not to cringe, watching this emotionally ready actress fling herself headlong into false material.'

Undaunted, Pfeiffer took the even riskier role of Ingrid Magnussen in Peter Kosminsky's version of Jane Fitch's bestseller, White Oleander (2002). Having poisoned her lover, Ingrid is jailed leaving daughter Astrid (Alison Lohman) to the mercies of the foster system, as she is billeted with onetime stripper, Starr Thomas (Robin Wright). Fresh from picking up a Screen Actors Guild nomination, Pfeiffer voiced Eris the godess of chance in Tim Johnson and Patrick Gilmore's animated fantasy, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003), which boasted Brad Pitt as the voice of the fabled sailor. Such was her struggle to find the right tone for her character that Pfeiffer contacted producer Jeffrey Katzenberg and said, 'You know, you really can fire me.' He coaxed her into completing the task, although it proved to be her last job for four years, during which time she passed on the part of the White Witch that was eventually taken by Tilda Swinton (the subject of another of Cinema Paradiso's Getting to Know articles) in Andrew Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (2005).

There was also a fantasy element to Matthew Vaughn's take on the Neil Gaiman novel, Stardust, which was one of the three features that Pfeiffer made on her return to action in 2007. She played Lamia, a witch desirious of eternal youth, who conjures up a wayside inn to ensnare Tristan Thorn (Charlie Cox), who has passed from the English town of Wall into the magical realm of Stormhold in order to restore Yvaine (Claire Danes), who is a fallen star. Commended for her comic timing, Pfeiffer was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Saturn Awards. However, she had to endure the ignominy of being released direct to disc for the first time in Amy Heckerling's I Could Never Be Your Woman, a misfiring romcom that sees fortysomething divorced screenwriter Rosie Hanson become involved with a younger man (Paul Rudd) when she produces a television show.

Redemption came in another TV studio, as Pfeiffer let rip as Velma Von Tussle, the bigoted WYZT station manager in Adam Shankman's Hairspray (2007), which recreated the Broadway musical that had been inspired by John Waters's 1988 cult classic of the same name. Nikki Blonsky plays Tracy Turnblad, who hopes to become a dancer on The Corny Collins Show, while John Travolta dragged up to essay her mother, Edna (the role previously taken by Divine). Pfeiffer was challenged by some of Velma's dialogue, but reasoned that 'in order to do a movie about racism, somebody has got to be the racist'.

The ensemble was nominated for Best Cast in a Motion Picture by the Screen Actors Guild, only to lose out to Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country For Old Men (2007). However, awards season bypassed David Hollander's Personal Effects (2008), which cast Pfeiffer as Linda, the widow of an alcoholic murder victim with a deaf and non-verbal teenage son, who is drawn towards Walter (Ashton Kutcher), a wrestler almost half her age who wears a chicken suit at Mega-Burger while coming to terms with the brutal demise of his sister. A similar theme also informed Chéri (2009), an adaptation of a Colette story that reunited Pfeiffer with director Stephen Frears and writer Christopher Hampton. This time, the setting is the Belle Époque and sees retired courtesan Léa de Lonval form an attachment to Fred (Rupert Friend), the flamboyantly dissolute son of her wealthy rival, Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates).

The critics latched on to the deftness of Pfeiffer's performance, with The Times calling her 'magnetic and subtle, her worldly nonchalance a mask for vulnerability and heartache'. But she decided to extend her sabbatical by another two years to ensure that her children could focus on their education.

Fifty Films and Counting

Having cropped up alongside Liza Minnelli, Marisa Tomei, and Paul McCartney in Laurieann Gibson's Lady Gaga Presents: The Monster Ball Tour At Madison Square Garden (2011), Pfeiffer returned to the big screen as part of the stellar troupe assembled for Garry Marshall's New Year's Eve (2011). Coming between Valentine's Day (2010) and Mother's Day (2016) in his holiday trilogy, this busy saga sees deliveryman Paul Doyle (Zac Efron) agree to help Ahern Records secretary Ingrid Withers (Pfeiffer) fulfil her New Year resolutions in return for tickets to a masquerade ball.

The following year, she signed up to play Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the head of a 1970s family learning about an 18th-century curse placed upon Collinwood Mansion in Maine in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows. Spun off from the gothic small-screen soap opera of the same name, this rare Burton misstep co-starred Johnny Depp, Eva Green, and Helena Bonham Carter, while also providing Christopher Lee with his 200th film role. Also in 2012, Pfeiffer played another mother in the debuting Alex Kurtzman's People Like Us, which sees Chris Pine return home following the death of his estranged father to discover he has a half-sister (Elizabeth Banks). And domestic issues were also to the fore in Luc Besson's crime comedy, The Family (2013), which teamed Pfeiffer with regular co-star Robert De Niro. They play Giovanni and Maggie Manzoni, who are living under the witness protection programme as Fred and Maggie Blake. However, things start to unravel when they move to a new address in Normandy.

Needing to devote more time to her children, Pfeiffer took another four years out of the media glare. 'The only trepidation,' she confided in a profile, 'was I think I took for granted how nice it was to not be under the spotlight and just having a life. I remember thinking, "Do I really want to step back into this?" And I just realised that I'm not done. I have a lot more to do, and a lot more to say. I'm never going to be one that retires.'

Proving the point, she returned with a bang as Woman in Darren Aronofsky's psychological horror, Mother! Inspired by the Book of Genesis, the action initially centres on Him (Javier Bardem), a poet suffering from writer's block, and Mother (Jennifer Lawrence), who comes to live in an edenic paradise that has been created from a burnt-out ruin by a magic crystal. But the idyll is disturbed by the intrusion of Man (Ed Harris), Woman (Pfeiffer), and their two sons (Brian and Domhnall Gleeson). Critics were divided and audiences baffled, but most agreed that Pfeiffer and Lawrence had excelled in demanding roles. Less was required by Kenneth Branagh, as Pfeiffer was cast as widowed socialite Caroline Hubbard in the 2017 reworking of Agatha Christie's Murder On the Orient Express (2017). Lauren Bacall had taken the role in Sidney Lumet's 1974 version, although she wasn't required to croon 'Never Forget' on the soundtrack.

Completing a busy year, Pfeiffer essayed Kyra Johnson, a woman struggling to hold on to her secrets following her mother's death in Andrew Dosunmu's Deceit (aka Where Is Kyra?, 2017). Yet to be released on disc in the UK, this psychological saga has barely been seen. The same cannot be said, however, for Peyton Reed's Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Anthony and Joe Russo's Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Reed's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), which saw Pfeiffer enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Janet Van Dyne (aka Wasp).

She remained in the fantasy realm as the malicious Queen Ingrith opposite Angelina Jolie in Joachim Rønning's Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019), a sequel to Robert Stromberg's Maleficent (2015) that was Disney's live-action take on Clyde Geronimi and Wolfgang Reithermann's 1959 animated gem, Sleeping Beauty. Pfeiffer followed this with one of the finest performances of her career. But we can't currently access Azazel Jacobs's French Exit (2020), an adaptation of a Patrick deWitt novel that dispatches widow Frances Pike and son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) to Paris after they have been left penniless by the husband (Tracy Letts) who appears to have reincarnated as the family cat.

Having received another Golden Globe nomination, Pfeiffer returned to the small screen to join Robert De Niro in playing Bernie and Ruth Madoff in Barry Levinson's HBO biopic, The Wizard of Lies (2019). She received another Golden Globe nod, as well as her first Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Movie. She should have been similarly rewarded for her insightful performance as Betty Ford, alongside Gillian Anderson's Eleanor Roosevelt and Viola Davis's Michelle Obama in Suzanne Bier's 10-episode Showtime series, The First Lady (2022). Bier cast Pfeiffer after getting to know her while directing The Undoing (2020), which had been written by David E. Kelley and had featured outstanding performances by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. According to the schedules, Pfeiffer will next be seen in Michael Showalter's Oh. What Fun., a holiday comedy that is being prepared by Amazon MGM. She's also been linked with Peter Craig's Wild Four O'Clocks and Gideon Raff's Turn of Mind, which has been adapted by Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright from an Alice LaPlante bestseller about an orthopaedic doctor with Alzheimer's who is trying to work out in her lucid moments whether she's guilty of murder. After doing each other the occasional life-changing favour down the years, Pfeiffer will finally get to co-star with Annette Bening. We can't wait.