Michelle's Biography

Part 8: Dangerous Minds

With the release of The Fabulous Baker Boys, Michelle was on a career high. In her personal life, however, it was a different case. After her split from Peter Horton, and a number of what she called 'romantic disappointments' she found solace in her work. She spoke in 1995 about this
period in her life: 'Divorce in particular was the unhappiest time of my life. It was devastating and took such a long time to get over. Maybe a lot of people thought I was very sophisticated and knew all the answers when I was really rather naive and shy.' She added, 'My father had been very
strict and gave me a tight curfew as a teenager. I didn't date much. In fact, my first husband was practically my first proper boyfriend. I had to learn about men and relationships in the most public of ways, which was far from ideal.'

She spoke in the late 1980s of the duality in her personality and how it impacted on her life, and more specifically, her relationships: 'If other people's image of me is anything like my own, it's very confused. I'm a different persona every day. I look at my wardrobe sometimes and say, "Who
lives here? Whose closet is this?" My house is the same way. I mean, the rooms are decorated in all different styles. One room is Art Deco, one room is Santa Fe, one room is South of France. "Who is this person?" I keep thinking I should be consistent; I should be able to say this is who I am.'

She added, 'I'm very extreme in my personality. Even after just one or two glasses of wine, I don't really like my personality, although I feel I'm a lot freerer, more comfortable, more outgoing. I like who I am sober. I don't like losing control. I gave a balance with it now. I have a problem with perfectionism. Every time I finish a role, I always feel I could have done it better. If I'm not beating myself up, I feel insecure. It's hard for me to explain because I'm still trying to figure me out. I guess I can be hard on myself. I don't know how much of that has to do with a lak of self-confidence and how much it has to do with being a perfectionist. I don't know that I'll ever be able to really look at my work objectively. What I have learned to do is accept that about myself. I don't know that my view of my work will change, but I know that I can beat myself up a lot less about it.'

Michelle in The Fabulous Baker Boys

About her social life, she said, 'I'm not real social. It's not my strong point. I tend to have a very small group of people I socialise with. I'm very guarded. It takes me a long time to get loose with people, to allow myself to open up to them, but once I do, I'm really friends for life with them.'

Having had to combine singing with acting in The Fabulous Baker Boys, Michelle decided to take a different sort of risk in her next venture; this time tackling the double challenge of live theatre and Shakespeare. She had only previously played a small role in a 1981 production of Playground in
the Fall, but was cast as wealthy, but lonely countess Olivia in the production of Twelfth Night, to be performed in New York's Central Park. She wasn't the only star. Also joining her were Jeff Goldblum, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Gregory Hines to name a few. Michelle talked of
her character's obsession with love: 'All of us have made that phonecall at 3AM we shouldn't have made. I'm very controlled as a person, but I kind of love being able to do that kind of thing with Olivia. It's very cathartic. Olivia's rather desperate, you know? Desperately in love and I admired her for not going into a marriage with someone she doesn't love.'

Michelle may have liked her character but playing her before crowds as large as 2000 was a terrifying experience by her account. 'On the way to work every day, I prayed that I would be hit by a taxi so I wouldn't have to go onstage.' She added on a separate occasion, 'Maybe if I had taken up sky-diving or been drafted into some war I might not have done it. But I wanted to do it. Even though I'd been offered a lot of money to do other things. A shitload of money. But it's the way I am- I'm incredibly safe, or I throw myself off the deep end. I let everyone know that I wanted to do something on stage- I told my agent I wanted to do this. I wanted to do something truly frightening.' The reviews did not help her self-confidence. 'Every night was sheer terror, but the night after the reviews came out was devastating. Having to get up there on that stage was unbelievable. But that was another example... I got myself to the theatre. I got myself dressed. I mustered up the courage to go on, and then I gave one of the best shows I did during the entire run. I had prayed for 40 days and nights of rain, but I got up and did a great show.' Of course she added, 'If you asked me to put on that costume and get on the stage right now, you couldn't
pay me enough.'

Michelle with Fisher Stevens at the 1990 Golden Globes, where she won for Best Actress in a Drama. She also won the following: The National Board of Review award for Best Actress, the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Actress, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best actress as well as tied for the Los Angeles Award for Best Actress Trivia: the first romantic weekend the couple spent in Paris was ruined when Fisher developed flu and Michelle had to nurse him through it.

What was more significant about making Twelfth Night, was not the actual making of it, but rather that Michelle met actor Fisher Stevens (real name: Steven Fisher) who played one of Olivia's comical suitors, Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Off-stage the couple hit it off, and during the next three years were to become something of a Hollywood odd-couple- the beautiful blonde and her younger, self-admitted 'geek' of a boyfriend. Michelle's father, Richard remarked on the difference between daughter's previous partners and Fisher: 'Fisher seemed like a strange turnaround for Michelle. But you know what she told me? "Dad, Fisher makes me laugh. The others made me cry."' Michelle was on Fisher's arm when awards season rolled around in early 1990. Thanks to her portrayal of Susie Diamond in The Fabulous Baker Boys, Michelle was nominated for, and won, basically every Best Actress accolade awarded, including a BAFTA (the British equvalent of an Oscar) and a Golden Globe. She was expected to win an Academy Award to round off her collection but on the night, for some inexplicable reason, voters chose Jessica Tandy as Best Actress for her work in Driving Miss Daisy. Not that it bothered Michelle in the slightest. With all the excitement passed, she took a break. She used her free time to hang out with Fisher, visit friends and as she put it, 'have a life.'

But being Michelle Pfeiffer, that break did not last very long. She was approached to play Russian book editor Katya Orlova in the film adaptation of John le Carre's spy novel, The Russia House. There were three drawcards for Michelle: The chance to stretch herself as an actress by attempting her first foreign accent, the chance to work with Sean Connery, who played unwilling agent, Barley Blair, and also the chance to be part of one of the first films in the new age of East-West relations to actually be filmed on location in Russia. She was initially concerned about separating herself
from Fisher, who was still working and living in New York, in the first few months of their relationship, but eventually the lure of the project became too great.

Working in Russia presented Michelle with a number of new experiences, some pleasurable, some not. One thing for sure, she developed a new appreciation for her Western freedoms. Actor Brian Cox, who had previously worked in Russia at the Moscow Arts Theatre School, was approached by the film's producers to organise something for Michelle to help soften the culture shock. He explained, 'The casting director for The Russia House asked me to organise something for Michelle Pfeiffer. She was looked after by our theatre group. It's a great support system to have people who know their way around because working in Moscow is not easy.'

Michelle spent much time researching, and in particular, perfecting her accent with the assistance of a dialect coach. Director Fred Schepisi was impressed: 'Much to my delight I found out that she's got a mina bird's ear for accents. Quite extraordinary. But she's also very sensible. She knows
what area she needs help in and who to get to help.'
Michelle said, 'The accent was a very difficult one for me. It was my first foreign accent, and I couldn't allow and American infexion to slip in. It's clear Katya learned English from an English professor. I had to think English and then I had to learn some Russian.'

The conditions to work in weren't any easier. Michelle spoke about the day the came to film the 'bell-tower sequence': 'On the ground level it was freezing point but 250 feet up the tower with the winds it was probably about 20 degrees lower than that. We came up to do the scene, and it's a
very long scene. We rehearsed it many times, and we ran it through and it was working beautifully- It kind of just flowed. And then all of a sudden, about take 2 or 3, I couldn't get the words to come out and I was thinking, Oh, what's the matter? What's wrong? Sean looked at me and said, "Your face is blue." And my face was frozen. I'm not joking! It really did freeze.'

As for actually working in Russia as decades of Communism fell away, she said, 'Everyone I know that came there, after about 6 days, had a kind of mini-nervous breakdown because the lifestyle is so deprived on many levels, and it fights your Western sensibilities. It's silly things that you take
for granted.' The same could be said when she discovered the difficulty of getting into her rather 'submissive' character. 'When I began to approach the part I was being an American, a modern American independent woman, and my idea of a woman who was holding down a career, supporting a family as a single person and as an American is very different than a Russian woman. I
know that in the beginning Fred (Schepisi) kept directing me to be kind of softer and more demure, and I was fighting it. After I'd been there a few weeks, and I had witnessed enough Russian women, I finally got it, and I went to him and said, "OK." He went, "Thank God." So it took a long time for me to get the complexities of what it means to be a Russian woman.'

Trivia:The filming of The Russia House took place during Michelle's rather famous 'Away from the cameras I always look like hell' period. During this grungy period when she didn't want to be recognised, her glamourous make-up artist was mistaken for her, when at the Lisbon Ritz hotel, people approached for an autograph. They could not believe it when the autograph book was passed to the scruffy woman, the real Michelle, alongside her.

The production eventually moved West to continue location filming in Portugal and Britain, and with it came the journalists and tabloid stories. When Fisher Stevens was visiting Michelle in London, a story surfaced that a location driver, who was chauffering the couple to lunch, was shocked by their actions in the back of the vehicle. His claim was that 'They could hardly keep their hands off each other: kissing and fondling and making a right exhibition of themselves.'

Michelle, scruffily dressed and smoking, was cornered by a journalist at a street cafe in Lisbon, and provided the man with several interesting statements. Once again she talked of her dislike of playing 'passive females', her 'repulsion' for the public eye in which she found herself, the
'devastating' break up of her marriage, but for the first time she was willing to comment on her relationship with Stevens. She said that she was in 'a wonderful relationship' and that: 'I am happy now. I am also more experienced. Marriage or affairs are one thing. But a relationship with
someone who is completely free to do what he likes is something else.' When asked about settling down, she explained, 'I do not feel like settling down. A lot happens, daily. Experience changes people and it takes a lot of effort to keep up with what I have become. Just when I feel I am getting in touch with that, I will have another experience which will change me. I meet more people in a yaer than many do in a lifetime. I am lucky in that sense because my life is very rich. So I have finally given in to it. I feel that I have the rest of my life to settle down and be in one place.
There are things I want to do- like have a family- but my life right now seems to be in a different phase. I realise I still have 10 years to have a child. So, at this point, I don't really know what the future holds for Fisher and myself.' What a difference a few years would make...

Back in the United States, despite the fact that they lived on different coasts, Michelle and Fisher made time for each other, staying at each other's homes and visiting their families together. This was all during a time when Michelle was heavily in demand. Robert Redford apparently wanted
her as his leading lady in The President Elopes, as did Warren Beatty for his film depicting the life of 'Bugsy' Siegel (The part of the gangster's moll eventually went to Annette Benning, who was to become Mrs Beatty). Michelle was not interested in either of the roles, nor did she become
involved in another project offered to her: the Ridley Scott directed Thelma & Louise, which would go on to great acclaim and controversy in its depiction of female empowerment. What Michelle did deign to do in this period was a smaller film, a vehicle for herself, called Love Field.

The film dealt with a simple but well-meaning hairdresser in 1960s Texas, obsessed with first lady, Jaqueline Kennedy. Naturally when the Kennedys arrive at Dallas's Love Field airport on that fateful day in November 1963, Lurene Hallett is there, and when JFK is assassinated, all she wants to do is get to the funeral in Washington DC to show her support for Jackie. When
her domineering husband refuses to let her go, she runs off anyway, and it is on the bus journey to the capitol that she meets a black pharmacist, Paul Cater, and his small daughter.

It sounded simple and sweet enough, but there was one small problem that, in the early 1990s was somewhat controversial: Lurene Hallet, a white woman, and Paul Cater, a black man, were to fall in love. Michelle explained, 'I invested a lot in that movie. It was a movie that was very difficult to get made. In fact, everybody was kind of frightened by it because there's an inter-racial relationship even though the movie isn't about that. It's really about two people finding each other over one weekend and changing each other's life drastically. It's the early 1960s- the time of
suppression of black Americans and American women. It's about the liberation of these two people and the struggle for that liberation.'

It did not matter what Michelle, or director Jonathan Kaplan thought. The project hopped from film studio to film studio, all of whom wanted the relationship between the two leads to be platonic, before eventually Orion, with whom Michelle and business partner Kate Guinzberg had a production deal, took it up. But problems were to continue. Denzel Washington, fresh from his award winning role in Glory, was all set to play the role of Paul Cater, but mere weeks before filming was set to begin, he bowed out as he felt the role was too passive. Michelle recalled, 'I remember crying after Denzel left. It was right after a reading and then he walked out, and I
felt like I had been broken up with. I felt I had been completely rejected. He just decided he didn't want to... it was kind of that simple. In his defence he didn't want to do it from the beginning, and we convinced him to do it. In the end he didn't want to do it.'

Director Kaplan said, 'It made her more resolved. It was clear then that if Michelle felt uncomfortable working with an unknown it was time to give up on the project. And I would have understood her decision. But Michelle didn't bat an eye. She's someone who goes on instinct and if you tell her she can't do something she'll want to do it twice as much.' Mere days before filming started, Dennis haybert came aboard the production. He was quite willing to talk about working with Michelle: 'Yes, I was nervous, but you know even in the circumstances we had a great deal of fun. Michelle is a consumate professional, and I like to think of myself in that way too. She was always there for the close-ups even when she was not on camera. She was always there for meand everyone else on the film. I was very comfortable with her because I knew what kind of actress she was.

Michelle spoke about her involvement in the production of the film: 'I did not produce the movie. I had to wear the producer's hat every now and then. Basically I had a relationshop with Orion because I have a production deal there. This was a movie that not a lot of people thought was a commercial film and it was difficult to get made- Orion took a gamble. So, sometimes, when there were problems that arose, I would get on the phone and I would scream at someone, and that's producing, isn't it?'

'I knew I had to be on my toes or I would have got run over. She's perky. When we were on location there was a lot of fun, a lot of fooling around off-camera, joking around in the make-up room. She should definitely do comedy.' As for doing the love scenes with her, he said, 'If it had been more explicit it would have been fine with me. After all, it was Michelle Pfeiffer.'
Jonathan Kaplan said of his leading lady, 'She's one of the least self-important people I've ever met.'

Michelle spoke of the location filming in Virginia and North Carolina, which doubled for Texas, 'The weather was difficult, and it was often pouring with rain... I don't do well in humidity. I'm a Southern California girl and that bus was a nightmare. The clothes and wig were only uncomfortable when i wasn't working- when you're working you don't really think about it. But when it's downtime and you have to sit around in the costumes it's kind of draining.' She said of playing platinum-blonde Lurene, 'This particular character was written so well and so specifically and with such a voice. I just think that (screenwriter) Don Roos had heard this character and when i read it, I heard it as well. Sometimes you just hear them, and then it's like jumping on a train. I just sort of jump on, and go along for the ride and that kind of caharcter just continues to energise you. I also had quit smoking (she had been smoking Marlboro lights for years) so that helped a lot with her freneticness. I really was just inspired by the writing.'

She added, 'I responded to the character, and I also responded to the hopefulness of her character and the willingness to give up everything and go through a shedding, if you will, to stand up for her sense of truth and her sense of what was right in her narcissistic and selfish and crazy and neurotic way. She's really a heroine. I think it is the willingness of both of the characters to overcome boundaries, overcome race, overcome sex, overcome class that is the hopeful message. When you look at the LA Riots, the world today, the United States today, it is a land of hopelessness. I think the film was about hope.' She recalled the Kennedy assassination as, 'the first time I saw my parents cry, and the first time I saw grown-ups cry- teachers, principals. As a child that's probably what frightened me the most because I was too young really to understand what was happening, but I remember feeling that this was something truly, truly terrifying.'

But in some ways, Love Field was a disappointment. It had been completed in a very short time as Orion studios were in financial trouble and when the film wrapped in late 1991, the situation at the studio was so bad that Love Field was simply shelved. Michelle complained, 'OK, movies are bound to come out different from the way you see them in your head. But a lot of people bled for this movie. And there were a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of anger. But I think we all put it behind us because there's a lot of work in the movie, a lot of effort, and a lot of good intentions.' Still, it was frustrating- all her hard work and nothing to show for it. Thelma & Louise in the meantime was going full-steam ahead. kate Guinzberg said,' I mean, you look at Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon on the cover of Time and go, "Huh? How could she have made this choice?" But commercial considerations are the last thing on her mind when Michelle's deciding on a project.'

The same could be said for Michelle's refusal of not only the Oscar-nominated role Susan Sarandon took in Lorenzo's Oil but also that of the award-winning Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs. Kate Guinzberg and the film's director, Jonathan Demme (Married to The Mob) both badly wanted her to take the role. Michelle explained her decision: 'The reason I was nervous was about the subject matter. I was concerned about the glorification of serial killers- not that they glorified it, but I did think that Anthony Hopkin's part was the most charming and smartest. And he wins in the end. So, that made me kind of nervous. There was only one time after that that I actually regretted turning it down and that was when i actually met Anthony Hopkins, and there was a moment when I thought, Oh, I should have done that movie with him. But that was the only time.' Click here to read in depth about The Silence of the Lambs and all the other films Michelle has turned down...

She diverted her attention again with work, this time deciding to work alongside Scarface co-star Al pacino in director Garry Marshall's blue-collar romance, Frankie & Johnny. Michelle said of first reading the script: 'Thirty pages into it knew I wanted to plat this part. Usually I mull over things forever. When I got to Canada (where she was visiting Fisher Stevens on location) I committed to do the film. It was really quick- for me particularly.'

Michelle with co-star Al Pacino. Trivia: The scene where Frankie bears her breasts to Johnny took 105 takes. Michelle said, 'It was very difficult for me. I was really a pain in the ass when we shot it- for about 3 days. Then we had to reshoot it. It was like this thing. Everyone knew I hated it.' When the scene was finally complete, Marshall issued the cast and crew with T-shirts saying, 'I survived Scene 105'

Part of the appeal of playing waitress Frankie, who, having been hurt by men too many times, has given up on love, was the dowdiness of the character. It was a chance to play down her looks and play an ordinary person. Naturally this was to lead to criticism. Frankie & Johnny was based on the Terrence McNally play, Frankie & Johnny at the Claire de Lune, and when it was first performed on stage in 1987, starred Kathy Bates and F. Murray Abraham as the title-characters. Kathy Bates and Michelle Pfeiffer playing the same role? When Michelle was cast, Bates was interviewed and apparenetly said that although Michelle was a great actress, she 'laughed hysterically' at the thought of her playing Frankie. Michelle justified her casting by saying, 'the description of the character of Frankie is an attractive woman if she'd just put a little effort into how she looks. So that's basically the way I played her. I consider myself an attractive woman, and I can be not-so-great-looking if I don't an effort into how I look. But more important the core of the character was someone has have given up on love and that could be any age, any size, any form of beauty. That could be anyone.' Her next words were to become some of her most quoted, 'Love is a funny thing. Nobody will never really be able to figure out why you love certain people or why you don't. It comes when you least expect it, falls apart when you least expect. and human nature is such that no matter how bruised or beat up you've been we somehow manage to muster up enough courage to open ourselves up one more time. It doesn't matter what you look like and how old you are. That's not relevant.'

'Frankie was someone who was terribly wounded and believed that for her, in this lifetime, it was just not going to happen. And that intruiged me. I was excited about the opportunity of just playing an ordinary person, with everyday fears, everyday struggles, everyday sorrows. There's a fantasy that beautiful people can't look unattractive or be lonely or aren't hurt. It's all fantasy that if you're considered attractive you have a perfect life, and there's no dark side. Everybody goes through shutting down and being hurt and being frightened. Everybody...'

Director Marshall. who also helmed Pretty Woman, spoke of the diffuculties of toning down Michelle's beauty: 'A lot of times I looked at the camera and said "Too pretty." We changed the lighting and the hair. You know, she was hired originally in this town as a beautiful girl. but she's learned how to act. She's an actress of unlimited range. She works incredibly hard- the body language, the hair, the voice. She's not bothered by movie-star stuff- whether she has a rug in her trailer or not. She doesn't care. She told me she felt the prettiest part of her was her collarbone. She told me she was a little embarrassed by her hands. She feels they are too big.'

Michelle spoke of working with Al Pacino, who played Johnny, a short-order cook recently released from prison and loking for a second chance in life, and love. 'I was very excited to work with Al knowing he was doing the part. The character is like nothing he'd ever done. People don't know that Al is funny, and he's very charming. He doesn't get to show that on film very often. We really had fun on the movie. the first month or so of shooting every day I would stop and say, "I can't believe these are the same two people working together." Because we both had come to such different places.'

Working with Garry Marshall was for Michelle, initially 'a little shocking.' She added, 'I'm a bit of a control freak. When you are doing something that is well-written it has a certain rhythm to it and for me it's like music. I find that rhythm, and I don't like it disrupted! Well, Garry likes to stir things up a lot. Al's a little looser so it wasn't so upsetting for Al. I let go of all my need to control everything and trusted that in the end if it didn't work, he wouldn't use it. We found things that we wouldn't have found. I really loved working with Garry a lot.'

Michelle with co-star Kate Nelligan. More trivia: During the indoor bowling scenes, that really is Michelle bowling strikes and spares.

Things were not entirely roses on the set though. A crazed female fan, believing herself to be Michelle's co-star, made very attempt to disrupt the set in New York, including renting an apartment in the building where some scenes were filmed. After repeated harrassments, including one where Michelle was forced to flee, the pest was escourted from the premises. This brought up the issue of personal safety: 'You could have the best security in the world but if someone wants to get you they can get you. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take precautions but many thinsg happen beyond a person's control. There are a lot of obsessive fans out there, but I don't really worry about it because it's not going to do me any good. I look at it this way- you have to be smart and realistic about these situations. But when it's your time to go, you're going to go.'

All these depressing thoughts aside, a project was just around the corner that would elevate Michelle to international super-stardom. She was going to become the cat who got the cream...

To Part 9...