From: Projo.com
Pfeiffer finds a new voice, embraces change
Playing a brash, pushy, workaholic, time-is-money lawyer in I Am Sam is
something new for Michelle Pfeiffer.
More often she's the romantic leading lady who is the victim of circumstance
rather than playing the protagonist.
Pfeiffer, on the phone from Los Angeles, says that all the bravado shown in I
Am Sam by her Rita Harrison -- a pushy lawyer who reluctantly takes on the
case of the retarded Sam (Sean Penn) who is trying to win back custody of his
7-year-old daughter -- is really a smokescreen:
"The truth is, she couldn't be more unsure of herself."
It's that bit of tightrope walking as Rita that made Pfeiffer wary of taking the
role in the first place, she says.
"This was something new for me. Usually when I read a script I can hear the
character's voice and rhythm. With Rita, it didn't come right away. I had to
slowly build up the courage to be as nasty as I could be. Really ruthless.
"I was scared of it, challenged by it. I didn't quite know what to do with
it. And when I feel that way, it means in my mind that I will fail."
Her friends and advisers weren't encouraging.
"They thought it was a very risky role for me," Pfeiffer admits.
"They thought she was nasty and unredeeming and terribly tragic. In many
ways she was so much more maternally challenged and emotionally disabled than
Sam. If anyone should have a child taken away, it would be her."
Yet Pfeiffer was urged to "push the envelope," as she says, by
director Jessie Nelson, who also co-wrote the script.
Nelson previously directed the warm-hearted drama Corrina, Corrina with
Whoopi Goldberg and co-wrote the hit Julia Roberts-Susan Sarandon film Stepmom
as well as Pfeiffer's own divorce drama, The Story of Us.
"Really, I wanted to work with Sean. I had worked with Jessie on The
Story of Us and I trusted her taste. She so so convinced me that it was fate
that I do this part. It was really a gift to me. I feel as though I've gotten
more out of this than I've given."
In fact, Pfeiffer adds with a laugh, "Once I found my voice, I really went
with it. There was no stopping me."
What gave her pause, however, was the very short rehearsal time during which she
had expected to hone in on her character by working with Penn. Instead, she
found nothing from him.
"I kept waiting to see little glimpses of his character, but it never
arrived during rehearsal, so I had to feel my way through.
"Then, on the first day of shooting, there he was . . . full blown! I guess
he had been working on Sam on his own."
Working on the film wasn't an easy experience, though not because of Penn.
"It was really guerrilla filmmaking. We had such an overly ambitious
schedule. We didn't have enough money and there was a fight every day to get
it," she says.
"We were always moving and tripping over each other, but it was fun.
Something like that can really be exhilarating. Fortunately, every person came
on board for the right reasons."
In her long career Pfeiffer has been nominated three times for the Academy Award
-- for 1988's Dangerous Liaisons, 1989's The Fabulous Baker Boys and
1992's Love Field -- but has never walked away with the gold statuette.
"Oh well," she says with a chuckle, "I may always be a bridesmaid
and never a bride, but at least I'm invited to the wedding.
"It's fine with me. It's always an honor to be nominated and to be in the
company of such disntinguished people who consider you to be one of their
peers."
She's not willing to guess how I Am Sam will do with the public. It has
been playing at one theater in Los Angeles since December in order to qualify
for the Academy Awards and several columnists have been touting Penn as a
shoo-in for the best actor category.
Pfeiffer says that it's hard to tell what will tickle the public's fancy and
become a hit.
"Sometimes you're just so wrong," she says. "Sometimes a movie
will test well with audiences and then it opens and nobody goes to see it. It's
one thing to be very pleasing to people and then another to get them into
theaters."
She mentions her romantic comedy One Fine Day, about a pair of single
parents who meet and fall in love, which she made with George Clooney in 1996.
"It tested through the roof. Audiences really responded to it, but then it
opened and nobody showed up."
Pfeiffer is hoping that that won't happen with I Am Sam. But then,
you never know.