Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer is an American actress and producer. One of the most bankable stars in Hollywood during the 1980s and 1990s, her performances have earned her various accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a British Academy Film Award, as well as nominations for three Academy Awards and one Primetime Emmy Award.
Pfeiffer began her acting career with minor appearances in television and film, and secured her first leading role in Grease 2. She achieved widespread recognition for her breakthrough performance as Elvira Hancock in Scarface, followed by mainstream success with The Witches of Eastwick and Tequila Sunrise. Pfeiffer received her first of six consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations for Married to the Mob. She earned consecutive Academy Award nominations, Best Supporting Actress for Dangerous Liaisons and Best Actress for The Fabulous Baker Boys, winning a Golden Globe Award for the latter.
Established as one of the highest-paid actresses of the 1990s, Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Batman Returns and received her third Academy Award nomination for Love Field. She continued to appear in prominent films throughout the decade, including The Age of Innocence and Wolf. Through her production company, Via Rosa Productions, she produced and starred in several films, including Dangerous Minds. In the 2000s, Pfeiffer reduced her acting workload to focus on her family, appearing in select projects such as What Lies Beneath, White Oleander, Hairspray and Stardust.
Following a hiatus, Pfeiffer returned to prominence in 2017 with roles in Where Is Kyra?, Mother!, and Murder on the Orient Express. That same year, she received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for portraying Ruth Madoff in the television film The Wizard of Lies. In 2020, she earned her eighth Golden Globe Award nomination for French Exit. Since 2018, Pfeiffer has portrayed Janet van Dyne in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Early life
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer was born on April 29, 1958, in Santa Ana, California, to Richard Pfeiffer, an air-conditioning contractor, and Donna Jean, a housewife. She has an older brother, Rick, and two younger sisters, Dedee and Lori. Her parents were both originally from North Dakota. Her paternal grandfather was of German ancestry and her paternal grandmother was of English, Welsh, French, Irish, and Dutch descent, while her maternal grandfather was of Swiss-German-Italian descent and her maternal grandmother of Swedish ancestry. The family moved to Midway City, another Orange County community around seven miles away, where Pfeiffer spent her early years.Pfeiffer attended Fountain Valley High School, graduating in 1976. She worked as a check-out girl at Vons supermarket, and attended Golden West College where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority. After a short stint training to be a court stenographer, she pursued an acting career. Pfeiffer won the Miss Orange County beauty pageant in 1978 and finished sixth in the Miss California contest the same year. After her appearances in these pageants, Pfeiffer acquired an agent and began to audition for television and film roles.
Career
Late 1970s and 1980s
Pfeiffer made her acting debut in 1978, in a one-episode appearance of Fantasy Island. Other roles on television series followed, including Delta House, CHiPs, Enos and B.A.D. Cats, as well as in the made-for-CBS film The Solitary Man. Pfeiffer transitioned to film with the comedy The Hollywood Knights, with Tony Danza, appearing as high school sweethearts. She subsequently played supporting roles in Falling in Love Again with Susannah York and Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen, none of which met with much critical or box office success. She appeared in a television commercial for Lux soap, and took acting lessons at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, before appearing in three 1981 television movies – Callie and Son, with Lindsay Wagner, The Children Nobody Wanted and Splendor in the Grass.Pfeiffer obtained her first starring film role as the female lead in Grease 2, the sequel to the smash-hit musical film Grease. With only a few television roles and small film appearances, the 23-year-old Pfeiffer was an unknown actress when she attended the casting call audition for the role, but according to director Patricia Birch, she won the part because she "has a quirky quality you don't expect". The film was a critical and commercial failure but Pfeiffer's performance was noted as a standout. The New York Times remarked: "lthough she is a relative screen newcomer, Miss Pfeiffer manages to look much more insouciant and comfortable than anyone else in the cast." Despite escaping the critical mauling, her agent later admitted that her association with the film meant that "she couldn't get any jobs. Nobody wanted to hire her." On her early screen roles, she asserted: "I needed to learn how to act... in the meantime, I was playing bimbos and cashing in on my looks."
Director Brian De Palma, having seen Grease 2, refused to audition Pfeiffer for Scarface, but relented at the insistence of Martin Bregman, the film's producer. She was cast as cocaine-addicted trophy wife Elvira Hancock. The film was considered excessively violent by most critics, but became a commercial hit and gained a large cult following in subsequent years. Pfeiffer received positive reviews for her supporting turn; Richard Corliss of Time Magazine wrote, "most of the large cast is fine: Michelle Pfeiffer is better..." while Dominick Dunne, in an article for Vanity Fair titled "Blonde Ambition", wrote, "he is on the verge of stardom. In the parlance of the industry, she is hot."
Following Scarface, she played Diana in John Landis' comedy Into the Night, with Jeff Goldblum; Isabeau d'Anjou in Richard Donner's fantasy film Ladyhawke, with Rutger Hauer and Matthew Broderick; Faith Healy in Alan Alda's Sweet Liberty, with Michael Caine; and Brenda Landers in a segment of the 1950s sci-fi parody Amazon Women on the Moon, all of which, despite achieving only modest commercial success, helped to establish her as an actress. She finally scored a major box-office hit as Sukie Ridgemont in the 1987 adaptation of John Updike's novel The Witches of Eastwick, with Jack Nicholson, Cher, and Susan Sarandon. The film received positive reviews and grossed over $63.7 million domestically, equivalent to $ million in dollars, becoming one of her earliest critical and commercial successes. Praising their comic timing, Roger Ebert wrote that Pfeiffer and her female co-stars each "have a delicious good time with their roles", while the Los Angeles Times film critic Sheila Benson said Pfeiffer makes her character "a warm, irresistible character."
Pfeiffer was cast against type, as a murdered gangster's widow, in Jonathan Demme's mafia comedy Married to the Mob, with Matthew Modine, Dean Stockwell and Mercedes Ruehl. For the role of Angela de Marco, she donned a curly brunette wig and a Brooklyn accent, and received her first Golden Globe Award nomination as Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, beginning a six-year streak of consecutive Best Actress nominations at the Golden Globes. Pfeiffer then appeared as chic restaurateuse Jo Ann Vallenari in Tequila Sunrise with Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell, but experienced creative and personal differences with director Robert Towne, who later described her as the "most difficult" actress he has ever worked with.
At Demme's personal recommendation, Pfeiffer joined the cast of Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liaisons, with Glenn Close and John Malkovich, playing Madame Marie de Tourvel, the virtuous victim of seduction. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post saw Pfeiffer's role as "the least obvious and the most difficult. Nothing is harder to play than virtue, and Pfeiffer is smart enough not to try. Instead, she embodies it. Her porcelain-skinned beauty, in this regard, is a great asset, and the way it's used makes it seem an aspect of her spirituality." She won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Pfeiffer then accepted the role of Susie Diamond, a hard-edged former call girl turned lounge singer, in The Fabulous Baker Boys, which also starred Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges as the eponymous Baker Boys. She underwent intense voice training for the role for four months, and performed all of her character's vocals. The film was a modest success, grossing $18.4 million in the US and Canada. Her portrayal of Susie, however, drew unanimous acclaim from critics. Critic Roger Ebert compared her to Rita Hayworth in Gilda and to Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, adding that the film was "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". During the 1989–1990 awards season, Pfeiffer won as Best Actress at the Golden Globes, the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Chicago Film Critics Association. Pfeiffer's performance as Susie is considered to be the most critically acclaimed of her career. The scene in which her character seductively performs "Makin' Whoopee" atop a grand piano is considered to be a memorable scene in modern cinema.
1990s
In 1990, Pfeiffer formed her own film production company, Via Rosa Productions, with business partner Kate Guinzburg, whom she had met on the set of Sweet Liberty. The company was under a picture deal with Touchstone Pictures, a film label of The Walt Disney Studios. That year, Pfeiffer began earning $1 million per film, and took on the part of the Soviet book editor Katya Orlova in the film adaptation of John le Carré's The Russia House, with Sean Connery, a role that required her to adopt a Russian accent. For her efforts, she was rewarded with a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. Pfeiffer then landed the role of damaged waitress Frankie in Garry Marshall's Frankie and Johnny, a film adaptation of Terrence McNally's Broadway play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, which reunited her with her Scarface co-star, Al Pacino. The casting was seen as controversial by many, as Pfeiffer was considered far too beautiful to play an "ordinary" waitress; Kathy Bates, the original Frankie on Broadway, also expressed disappointment over the producers' choice. Pfeiffer herself stated that she took the role because it "wasn't what people would expect of ". Pfeiffer was once again nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama for her performance.Pfeiffer took on the role of Selina Kyle–Catwoman in Tim Burton's superhero film Batman Returns, opposite Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito, after Annette Bening dropped out because of her pregnancy. For the role, she trained in martial arts and kickboxing. Pfeiffer received unanimous critical acclaim for her portrayal, which is often referred to as the greatest performance of Catwoman of all time by critics and fans. Premiere retrospectively stated: "Arguably the outstanding villain of the Tim Burton era, Michelle Pfeiffer's deadly kitten with a whip brought sex to the normally neutered franchise. Her stitched-together, black patent leather costume, based on a sketch of Burton's, remains the character's most iconic look. And Michelle Pfeiffer overcomes Batman Returns heavy-handed feminist dialogue to deliver a growling, fierce performance." Batman Returns was a big box office success, grossing over $267 million worldwide.
The first film her company produced was the independent drama Love Field, which was released in 1992. Reviewers embraced the film and The New York Times felt that Pfeiffer was "again demonstrating that she is as subtle and surprising as she is beautiful". For her portrayal of an eccentric Dallas, Texas housewife, she earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe for Best Actress – Drama and won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival. In Martin Scorsese's period drama The Age of Innocence, a film adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel, Pfeiffer starred with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, portraying a Countess in upper-class New York City in the 1870s. For her role, she received the Elvira Notari Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture. That year, she was awarded the Women in Film Los Angeles' Crystal Award.
Following the formation of her producing company, Via Rosa Productions, Pfeiffer saw a professional expansion as a producer. While she continued to act steadily throughout the decade, she and her producing partner Guinzburg experienced a winning streak of producing back to back films next under their header. She starred with Jack Nicholson in the 1994 horror film Wolf, portraying the sardonic and willful interest of a writer who becomes a wolf-man at night after being bitten by a creature. The film was released to a mixed critical reception; The New York Times wrote: "Ms. Pfeiffer's role is underwritten, but her performance is expert enough to make even diffidence compelling." Wolf was a commercial success, grossing $65 million at the domestic box office and $131 million worldwide.
Pfeiffer's next role was that of high school teacher and former United States Marine LouAnne Johnson in the drama Dangerous Minds, co-produced by her company. She appeared as her character in the music video for the soundtrack's lead single, "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio, featuring L.V.; the song won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance, and the video won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Rap Video. While Dangerous Minds received negative reviews, it was a box office success, grossing $179.5 million around the globe. In 1996, Pfeiffer portrayed Sally Atwater in the romantic drama Up Close & Personal, with Robert Redford, took on the titular role in the drama To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, which was adapted by her husband David Kelley from Michael Brady's play of the same name, and served as an executive producer and starred as the divorced single mother architect Melanie Parker in the romantic comedy One Fine Day, with George Clooney.
Subsequent performances included Rose Cook Lewis in the film adaptation of Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres with Jessica Lange and Jennifer Jason Leigh; Beth Cappadora in The Deep End of the Ocean about a married couple who find their son who had been kidnapped nine years before; Titania the Queen of the Fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream with Kevin Kline, Rupert Everett and Stanley Tucci; and Katie Jordan in Rob Reiner's comedy drama The Story of Us with Bruce Willis. A Thousand Acres and The Deep End of the Ocean were also produced by Via Rosa Productions. Pfeiffer voiced Tzipporah, a shepherdess who becomes the wife of Moses, in DreamWorks Animation's The Prince of Egypt, a musical adaptation based on the Book of Exodus. She also recorded the film's theme song "When You Believe", for which songwriter Stephen Schwartz won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The Prince of Egypt was released to critical and commercial success, but Kenneth Turan found the film's modernization of Pfeiffer's character into a "feisty protofeminist" to be problematic.