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Biography
When Halle Berry won Best Actress at the
2002 Oscars many talked of the tough time she'd had transforming herself
from a Beauty Pageant Queen into a top-line artist. It had indeed been a
hard road, but one that had been travelled before, most notably by
Michelle Pfeiffer.
One of very few actresses capable of
carrying a movie on her own, she rose from extremely lowly and sometimes
dangerous beginnings to form a great female film-star triumverate with
Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange. So respected is she by her peers that
all the men would have her as their screen partner - from mainstream
super-idols like Harrison
Ford to indie mavericks like Sean
Penn. And they have good reason - she can do it all.
She was born in Santa Ana, California, near Huntingdon Beach, on the
29th of April, 1958. Her father, Richard, was a heating and
air-conditioning contractor. Her mother, Donna, was a housewife, looking
after Michelle, her elder brother Rick, and two younger sisters, Dedee
and Lori. Dedee would become an actress too but, far more flamboyant
than the shy Michelle, would often court controversy, in 2002 even
stripping off and simulating sex with some fellow in Playboy.
Richard and Donna had moved to California from North Dakota to escape
the fall-out of post-WW2 depression. Their heritage makes Michelle a mix
of Swedish, German, Dutch, Irish and Swiss ("I'm kind of a
mutt", she's said). Resolutely blue collar and with Richard a
strict authoritarian, they eventually settled the family in Midway City.
Incredibly, given her professional
reputation now, Michelle was a horror of a child. Attending Fountain
Valley High School, she was constantly ribbed for having big lips and
walking like a duck - taunts that would make her insecure about her
looks well into her thirties. Nicknamed Michelle Mudturtle (a name she
actually rather likes), she became violently defensive, and a
bully.
The biggest in her class and wearing an
inappropriately cute pixie hairdo, she made a habit of bashing everyone,
even the boys, often stepping in to settle other people's disputes.
"I was a rotten kid," she said later "just rotten. If
anyone needed anyone beaten up they would come and get me". She was
"not terribly feminine" and, believing boys only liked little
girls with ringlets and beatific smiles, was taken aback in Fourth Grade
when she found the most popular boy in class had a crush on her. Very
stubborn, she'd mouth off constantly, putting on quite a performance -
her mother coming to know her as "my little actress".
Yet Michelle, thanks to disciplinarian Richard, also had a strong work
ethic. She'd help her father clean second-hand fridges for re-sale and,
from the age of 14, lied about her age to get paid work. She worked in a
kindergarten, in a printer's, and in clothing and jewellery shops, and
as a check-out girl for Vons supermarket chain.
She wasn't much of a student, preferring to hang with the surfers on
Huntingdon Beach. "I was a beach bunny," she later admitted
"into all kinds of drugs". Very naughty indeed, she wrecked
her first motor, a red '65 Mustang, before she was 16. Nevertheless, she
did OK at school, being one of those who don't have to try too hard. In
fact, she completed in just three years.
After High School, unsure of what to do, she attended community college,
studying to be a court reporter. Soon bored senseless, she left but, for
two years afterwards, was still mentally typing out whatever anyone
said. She moved on to Golden West College to study psychology, but again
got bored. She dropped out, came back, dropped out again.
All the while she was working to support
herself in Vons and it was here that she was hit by Road To Tarsus-style
career revelation. She was kind of interested in psychology, and
oil-painting, but she'd also always enjoyed Drama (for which she'd got a
B). She recalled her teacher, Carol Cooney, saying that she had some
talent, so she decided to go for it.
Her hairdresser had told her that one route to getting an agent was
through Beauty Pageants. She didn't want to play on her looks - after
all, she had big lips and walked like a duck - but took his advice, had
some model shots done, and entered the Miss Orange County competition.
She won, duly entered the Miss Los Angeles pageant and, despite losing,
acquired an agent - John LaRocca.
Her dad reckoned she'd be a "broken-down housewife with a kid on
each hip" by the time she was thirty. But Michelle persisted, as
she always persists when told she will not succeed. She moved to
Hollywood, working at Vons there and doing ads for Ford motors and Lux
soap. She attended all the cattle-call auditions, once trying out as
Tiffany Welles in Charlie's Angels (Shelley Hack got the part) and
finally scored a debut in Fantasy Island ("Eet's the plehn,
boss!") as a pretty, dumb blonde with one line - "Who is he,
Naomi?"
Trouble was, Pretty Dumb Blonde was all
she ever got, this terrible period culminating in the TV series Delta
House, which sprang from the hit movie Animal House. Michelle, credited
as Bombshell, got very few lines, at one point weeping down the phone to
her agent - "They're putting me in hot-pants again!"
Yet she pushed on, renting a place in Laurel Canyon and acting and
singing under the tutelage of the legendary Milton Katselas. She got a
small role in the Earl Holliman-starring The Solitary Man, and played
Susannah York in flashback in Falling In Love Again. In the meantime,
there was a short-lived TV series, BAD Cats, a kind of LA-set Dukes Of
Hazzard rip-off.
Here Michelle played Samantha
"Sunshine" Jensen, a southern belle helping two renegade cops
in the Burglary Auto Detail. And she was Suzie Q in The Hollywood
Knights, a cheapskate American Graffiti, where a motor gang raise hell
at Halloween 1965. Tony Danza starred - not much else need be said. The
next time Michelle played a character called Suzie, the situation would
be VERY different.
So, work was beginning to come, but her personal life was down the pan.
Desperately insecure about herself, her looks, her talent and the
future, Michelle had turned to a cult for guidance. Dealing in
metaphysics and demanding vegetarianism, they'd certainly helped clean
her up - she no longer drank, smoked or did drugs. But she was also
handing over control of her life and prospects to them. "I was
brainwashed," she said later "I gave them an enormous amount
of money" - though she did add that she'd rather have depended on a
cult than on drugs or "some lecherous man". She wanted to
leave but, having no confidence in her ability to live without them, she
couldn't.
Luckily, help was at hand. In Michelle's acting class at the Beverly
Hills Playhouse was budding director Peter Horton. In his first scene
with her, he'd thought "This poor little girl, she's not very
good" - but soon he'd realised what she was doing, working with her
guts, looking for something real. With the pair beginning to date, he
realised her plight and wanted to help. Coincidentally, he was to appear
in a movie called Split Image, where a kid is enrolled in Peter Fonda's
cult then ruthlessly de-programmed by James Woods.
Researching the part, he travelled to San
Francisco, taking Michelle with him to meet some real-life
de-programmers. Recognising what they told her to be the truth, she
found the strength to leave the cult. But she did cling to Horton,
marrying him in 1981 at the Santa Monica court house. She was 22, he was
26. Due to dad Richard's strict regime, Michelle said Peter was
"practically my first proper boyfriend".
Now work really began to pick up, some of
it good. In a remake of Splendour In The Grass, she played Ginny,
bad-girl sister of Bud Stamper (originally played by Warren Beatty), the
object of Melissa Gilbert's affections. Then came her first stand-out
performance, in The Children Nobody Wanted. Here she played the helpful
girlfriend of Tom Butterford, a fellow who keeps adopting kids to save
them from the perils of the orphanage.
It was now that Michelle really began her inexorable rise. In 1981, the
search was on for a female star for Grease 2, expected to be the biggest
smash of the early Eighties. Parallels were being drawn with the battle
to play Scarlett O'Hara (though this was hardly in the same league).
Michelle auditioned but really felt she wasn't up for it, not being a
dancer. The director, however, Patricia Birch, thought she had real
grace and pushed hard and successfully for her inclusion. So she became
Stephanie Zinone, leader of a gang of bikers' molls called the Pink
Ladies who embarks on a will-they won't-they relationship with Brit new
boy Maxwell Caulfield.
She danced, she sang, she really was pretty good. But Grease 2 turned
out to be a bad experience. First came the embarrassment of the posters
- HUGE posters - that showed Michelle and Maxwell and yelled "TOO
HOT!!" Then came the fact that the movie was poor and far from a
success. And then she found herself typecast once more.
She was now a sassy blonde rather than a
dumb one, but it was still insufferable for an actress who was
struggling so hard to be taken seriously (by herself as well as everyone
else). Refusing to play the game, she did not work for a year, instead
helping out Horton - she'd help produce his F. Scott Fitzgerald video
and star in his educational film about the dangers of drink-driving, as
the worried girlfriend of booze-boy Val Kilmer.
In many ways, times were hard. But then a real meaty role came along -
as Elvira, the coke-addled, ice queen girlfriend of drug-lord Tony
Montana in Brian De Palma's Scarface, written by the up-and-coming
Oliver Stone. Unfortunately, De Palma had seen Grease 2 and refused
Michelle point-blank. But the producer pushed him to give her a chance
and, onstage in rehearsal, despite being wholly intimidated by Al
Pacino, she won De Palma over.
Scarface was, of course, groundbreakingly
rude and violent, with men being chainsawed in the bath and hanged from
helicopters. Pacino's swearing smashed all records as he buried his head
in mounds of cocaine and asked all comers to "Say hhello to ma
leedle friend!" And Michelle was superb. Absolutely pristine, she
embodied the wealth these wicked men sought. And sullen, frustrated and
bombed out of her skull, she was also a paragon of female pain. Her
raging bathroom arguments with Pacino were hard to witness - so real it
almost felt as if we were intruding.
But, despite her performance and the massive controversy surrounding
Scarface, Michelle would have to wait for real stardom. Continuing to
study under Peggy Feury, she moved on to Into The Night, a slapstick
comedy-thriller by John Landis, where she burst into the life of unhappy
insomniac Jeff Goldblum and, as she's an emerald-smuggler being tracked
by hit-men, led him on a wild night-time chase. She'd become friends
with Landis and he'd direct her and Horton together in a segment of the
skit-movie Amazon Women On The Moon (Horton would also direct a
segment).
Then came the mediaeval romance Ladyhawke where she and lover Rutger
Hauer were cursed by an evil bishop so that she'd be a hawk by day and
he'd be a wolf by night. Sneaky thief Matthew Broderick helped them in
their fight for true love. Filmed in Italy with Michelle having to act
with wolves, there was some challenge here, but she was mostly required
to be beautiful - something she actively loathes. "Just standing
around looking beautiful is so boring," she's complained
"really boring, so boring".
Her next part was more beefy, in Alan Alda's Sweet Liberty. Here Alda
played a historian whose book on the American Revolution is to be made
into a film (and, of course, entirely re-written). Michelle played the
eccentric, enigmatic lead, with whom Alda becomes besotted. And then
came something of a breakthrough - The Witches Of Eastwick. Here
Michelle played Sukie Ridgemont, a small-town journalist and single mum.
Lacking any excitement, she gets together with equally unfulfilled
buddies Susan Sarandon and Cher to conjure up the perfect man. And up he
pops in the shape of Jack Nicholson as Daryl Van Horne , a rich man,
consummate seducer and, quite possibly, the Devil. Liberated by his
attentions, they discover their own innate power and, finally, banish
him.
Michelle remembers the filming as
difficult, mostly because the studio were intent upon turning John
Updike's treatise on freedom into a feast of special effects. But
Nicholson, she said, held everyone together, keeping calm and organising
impromptu rehearsals in his hotel. Michelle had further problems in that
her marriage to Horton (now Professor Gary Shepherd in thirtysomething)
was breaking up. They had grown away from each other, particularly as
her confidence was higher and she no longer needed controlling. And the
split was amicable - he even helped pack her car. But it still hurt like
hell.
Michelle moved on to take a course in mediaeval philosophy at UCLA and,
onscreen, stepped up to headliner. First, on TV, she played Natica
Jackson, a famous but lonely 30's actress who fell for a married chemist
and suffered the outrage of society and eventual tragedy (unsurprising
as the story was based on the work of John O'Hara). Her reviews were
tremendous, but there was more to come. Michelle fancied playing a
brunette in a "dingy role" and tried for the lead in Married
To The Mob.
Director Jonathan Demme didn't want her
so she left for Italy (she'd loved it while filming Ladyhawke), only to
be told they wanted her after all. So she spent time on Long Island,
picking up that hilarious, whining accent, and stole the show as Angie
DeMarco - quickly the widow of murdered gangster The Cucumber. Trying to
leave the Mob and neighbourhood, she's drawn back by the romantic
attentions of Dean Stockwell as Tony "The Tiger" Russo. It was
a comic tour de force with Michelle perky, harassed, courageous,
vulnerable, and very sweet on her dates with undercover cop Matthew
Modine.
Nominated for a Golden Globe, Michelle was now on her way. She joined
the all-star cast of Dangerous Liaisons, playing the honourable, married
Madame de Tourvel who becomes the subject of a bet between wicked
ex-lovers Glenn Close and John Malkovich. For a night with Close,
Malkovich must seduce Michelle. He struggles but pulls it off, at the
cost of falling in love with Michelle, whose terrible distress at her
actions touches even his cold heart. It certainly touched the Academy,
which nominated her for an Oscar. Michelle and Malkovich would have a
short fling in real-life too.
Next came Tequila Sunrise, where she played a restauranteuse caught
between drug-dealer Mel
Gibson and cop Kurt Russell. She said later that she did not enjoy
the experience much as director Robert Towne (writer of Chinatown) did
not allow freedom of expression. She was also uncomfortable at having to
appear nude - this was only the second time she'd done so, after Into
The Night.
Now, in 1989, came another killer role,
as Susie Diamond in The Fabulous Baker Boys, a part turned down by
Madonna for being "too slushy" (she's never been able to pick
'em, has she?). Here Jeff and Beau Bridges played a piano-duo who try to
shake up their act by bringing in a singer. Susie is an ex-escort who
learns fast, and Michelle was at her absolute sexiest, slinking all over
Jeff's piano while lip-synching to her own version of Makin' Whoopee in
a scene that's often described as one of the biggest male turn-ons in
screen history. It won her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination and a
billion male fans.
Keen for yet more of a challenge, Michelle now took to the stage.
Despite having only done it once, in a small role in a 1981 production
of Playground In The Fall, she appeared as Countess Olivia in Twelfth
Night, alongside her former co-stars Jeff Goldblum (Into The Night) and
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Scarface). There were crowds of 2000,
scathing reviews, and she kept on till she was excellent. The woman has
cajones of titanium.
And quite deservedly, on Twelfth Night she found love, with actor Fisher
Stevens, playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek. People thought him a little geeky
for such a great beauty but, hey, Arthur Miller managed it. They'd
remain a couple for some three years.
Next Michelle moved on to John Le Carre's spy thriller The Russia House,
sometimes filming at 20 below, and being Golden Globe nominated once
more. She turned down a few parts, too. There was Bugsy, a part taken by
Annette Bening, who'd end up marrying star Warren Beatty (this turned
out to be extremely advantageous for Michelle). There was Thelma And
Louise and, because she felt too ill-educated, there was Lorenzo's Oil,
both of which brought Oscar nominations for Susan Sarandon.
Because she thought it might glorify
violence, there was Silence Of The Lambs (Oscar for Jodie Foster). There
was Basic Instinct (she asked for the sex to be toned down but was
refused), Sleepless In Seattle, which she found silly, and Disclosure.
And later there'd be Evita. Michelle actually worked for months on Evita
but dropped out when director Oliver Stone withdrew and the production
was moved from LA (by this time Michelle had a family).
Instead Michelle had involved herself in the production of Love Field,
where she'd play a Dallas housewife who, obsessed with Jackie Kennedy,
witnesses JFK's assassination and takes off on the bus to Washington.
Along the way, chased by her hubbie and the police, she becomes friends
with a mysterious black man and his daughter. It was all a bit of a
pain. Denzel
Washington had pulled out, filming-time was brief and then Orion got
into financial difficulties, meaning the film was shelved, and then
received only the most cursory release. But at least Michelle was
Oscar-nominated again, alongside Sarandon for Lorenzo's Oil.
Next, she reacquainted herself with Al
Pacino in Frankie And Johnny, playing a waitress who's disappeared
into tedium and cannot be touched - until she's gradually won over by
Pacino, an ex-jailbird now working as a chef. Many complained that the
couple weren't dowdy enough, and Frankie should have been played by
Kathy Bates, who'd starred onstage. But great pains were taken to make
Michelle look less pretty, many scenes being re-shot to cast her in a
more unflattering light.
Her hardest scene, though, was the one
where she finally opens up to Johnny, baring her breasts. As said,
Michelle is no Demi Moore when it comes to flashing the ass and got
tremendously nervous. So much so that the takes were endless, with
director Garry Marshall eventually issuing the crew with teeshirts
proclaiming "I survived Scene 105". Once more she was
nominated for a Golden Globe.
And now came the major breakthrough. She'd been well-known since The
Witches Of Eastwick, but Tim Burton's Batman Returns made her a
mega-star. This is where Michelle's refusal to do Bugsy served her well.
Though Sean Young was marching around Hollywood in a rubber suit,
yowling for the role, the part of Catwoman had gone to Annette Bening.
But Bening fell pregnant by Warren Beatty and had to pull out, leaving
the way open for Michelle. And, Christ, did she carpe diem.
Taking up kick-boxing, yoga and
weight-lifting, and learning to wield a whip with erotic precision
(that's her beheading dummies in the movie), she made a scintillating
Catwoman. And just as good was her Selina Kyle, mousy secretary to
Christopher Walken's corporate swine, who gets bullied and thrown to her
death from a window, only to be re-animated by the breath of stray cats
and transformed into a rubber-clad font of righteous female vengeance.
She was thrillingly good, a true match for Danny DeVito's wonderfully
disgraceful Penguin. And she brought some fire to her relationship with
Bruce Wayne. Michelle had actually dated Michael Keaton, having met him
in a supermarket back in the late Eighties. But he had been busy being
Batman and she's had left for Dangerous Liaisons so they'd split.
On she went to Scorsese's The Age Of Innocence, as Countess Ellen
Olenska who, having left her abusive hubbie, is ostracised by late 19th
Century New York. Comforted by Daniel Day-Lewis, the pair begin a love
affair that will destroy him too, if discovered, so she protects his
position by ending it and dooming them both to loveless respectability.
Michelle was perfectly regal, with a simmering undercurrent of passion -
a tremendously controlled performance. And all the better because she
never expected it.
Michelle had been trying to work with
Scorsese for years, but had received no reply, coming to the conclusion
(and this is SO Michelle) that this intellectual director must think she
was rubbish. But Scorsese had been a fan since Married To The Mob (well,
he was BOUND to love that accent, wasn't he?) and was just waiting for
the right part for her. He was right, yet another Golden Globe
nomination came her way.
Michelle was now big news. And, having
reached the summit of her profession, she decided to do something about
her empty private life, making arrangements to adopt a baby girl, soon
to be born to a New York nurse who already had four children and could
not afford another. And - naturally, for Sod hath decreed it - two weeks
later she met David Kelley.
Kelley had been a Boston lawyer who'd quit to write for LA Law. Then
came his own series, Picket Fences and a whole slew of mighty successes
like Chicago Hope and Ally McBeal. Michelle was set up on a blind date
with him but, not wanting to be alone with the guy, changed it to a
bowling excursion with a group of friends. Both being shy, they said
little to each other, but Kelley called later and invited her to a
screening of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. They began dating, and then
the former Bombshell dropped the bombshell about the adoption. Kelley
was thankfully supportive, so soon Michelle was off to New York to see
her baby born.
Invitations went out for the christening of Claudia Rose in November,
1993. Days beforehand, Michelle called the invitees to tell them it was
in fact a wedding, as so it was. Later that afternoon, the child was
christened Claudia Rose Kelley. And, immediately, Michelle fell
pregnant. Having made Wolf, where she played the rebellious daughter of
a publishing magnate, falling for underling Jack Nicholson who's
unfortunately turning into a werewolf, she moved on to Dangerous
Minds.
Here she was an ex-marine, now teaching
in an inner-city school and having to win over a classroom of seriously
suspicious kids. It was a big hit, promoted by Coolio's Gangster's
Paradise (she appeared in the video). But it was a tough shoot, Michelle
being six months pregnant AND working on the soon-to-be-ditched Evita.
More difficulty followed when Michelle had a suit brought against her by
Claudia Rose's father who claimed he'd given some ideas to Michelle when
they'd met - ideas she used in Dangerous Minds. In August, 1994, John
Henry Kelley was born.
Michelle battled to give her kids a "normal" upbringing, but
kept working. Next came Up Close And Personal, the true story of Jessica
Savitch, the first news anchor-woman. Here she played an ambitious woman
whose rise to fame is paralleled by the fall of her lover and
benefactor, played by Robert Redford. She made a brief appearance as the
ghost of Peter Gallagher's wife in To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday,
written by Kelley. And then she starred alongside George
Clooney in One Fine Day, an excellent romantic comedy where they
played a couple of single parents whose lives are suddenly intertwined.
Michelle served as executive producer on
One Fine Day, and producer of her next project, A Thousand Acres. This -
a little like King Lear - saw three sisters battling it out on an Iowa
farm, with Jason Robards as the father and Jessica Lange and Jennifer
Jason Leigh as Michelle's sisters. Next came the fraught The Deep End Of
The Ocean, where Michelle loses her youngest son in a crowd and, much to
her painful distress, he cannot be found. Years later, with the family
moved to a new town, she sees him - or thinks she does...
After this, Michelle, renowned as the most beautiful actress in the
world, took her rightful place as Titania, Faery Queen, alongside Rupert
Everett's Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Kelley's main star
Calista Flockhart also appearing. Then came Rob Reiner's sweet and
touching The Story Of Us, where Michelle and Bruce
Willis were a married couple out of love after 15 years. Looking
back over their relationship in flashback, they seek to re-find each
other.
Then came another step into the unknown. Most Hollywood actresses begin
their career in horror movies. Michelle waited 20 years for What Lies
Beneath, playing the wife of scientist Harrison
Ford (this was Ford's first big bad-guy role, only taken for the
chance to play beside Michelle). Wandering round their big house, she
begins to suspect weirdness and foul play from the neighbours - but the
truth is far more horrifying and much closer to home. This was another
shoot that gave Michelle problems, mostly because of the bath scenes,
which took weeks, meaning she had to be covered in petroleum jelly to
stop her skin being ruined. As someone who's scrupulously clean, often
bathing twice a day, Michelle found the experience utterly gross. If the
multiple baths sound odd, Michelle has publicly described herself as
obsessive-compulsive, perfectionist and selfish (in her career), with a
terrible fear of being discovered to be un-talented.
Now came I Am Sam. Here Sean
Penn played a father with a mental age of seven, whose daughter is
taken and put up for adoption. Desperate to keep her, he wangles the
services of a flash, none-too-pleasant lawyer (Michelle), along the way
teaching her the meaning of love. Then came a love story of a different
kind in White Oleander. Here Michelle played a poet jailed for poisoning
a lover who breaks her heart. Her daughter, meanwhile, is sent from one
foster home to another, seeing much that is good, bad and downright
strange about this world. All the while, mother and daughter keep in
contact through letters.
Michelle Pfeiffer seems to have life
down. She takes her children on set with her, finishing work early to
ensure she can make their dinner. She works on her family life, recognizing
that it is the most important thing to her. Having had a niece who
suffered leukemia for ten years (and having smoked herself for many
years), she supports the American Cancer Society, as well as the Humane
Society. She has a right to feel pleased with herself. After all this
time, the check-out girl from Vons who was forced into dumb blondeness
has grown into one of the most respected actresses of her, or any other
generation. She is, quite simply, magnificent. ~ Dominic Wills
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