Five
THE BEACH BUNNY INTO DRUGS - El conejito de la playa metida en drogas

'My father was very strict. I was very strong-willed. My earliest memory is going off to the circus when I wasn't supposed to go. I was about eight. I got whipped right in the front yard when I got home. But I mostly just didn't know how to behave on a date. I've always had a very extreme personality, which gets me into major trouble. I'm always all or nothing, and I don't know the word "balance".'

It would get her into major romantic difficulties in the future, but as a teenager her personality reflected her birth date, born 29 April 1958, giving her the star sign Taurus: 'I'm a Taurus to the bone. I'm very stubborn. I think I have common sense; I'm probably at times a bit tunnelvisioned, but I'm strong.' But this strength didn't stop her getting involved in drugs at Fountain Valley High School. She admits, 'I used to do drugs in high school. I was the beach bunny into all kinds of drugs.'

In the seventies cocaine was Hollywood's recreational drug of choice, -and some actors even had supplies of the drug written into their contracts: they would get paid so much in cash and the rest in 'the champagne of drugs'. On the beaches of California marijuana, because of the cheaper prices, was more popular. But all sorts of drugs were readily available in Huntington Beach where Pfeiffer and her friends hung out. The town became known as a druggie as well as a surf capital.

So it is with some irony that the small-town girl from Midway City should make it to Hollywood, a town often cited as a definition of decadence, and be able to say later, 'After I arrived I cleaned-up pretty much.' There was little choice. She had added something else to her already strong and stubborn personality - purpose.

As in her early days she didn't always run with a crowd: 'I spent a lot of my time alone, too. I still have a very hard time... socializing,' she said in a 1990 interview. 'I become paralysed when I have to make small talk. I'm really horrible at it. All I can hope is that I won't run out of questions to ask the other person so I can keep the conversation off myself. 'Which is why I'm not good at interviews. I tend to go right to the heart of things and get really personal. Then, afterwards, I read them and I think, Aw, shit! Why the fuck can't you just shut your mouth?'

But that voice was going to help her become a multimillionairess. Like the place where she was brought up, her natural speaking voice is nondescript, therefore it could be coached and nurtured more easily than some broad Brooklyn or giggly Glasgow accent. And, soon, everyone would want to hear her. At first the lines, albeit small ones, and then dialogue. After nearly twenty years in' Midway City it wasn't going to be long before she was watching her past vanish into the horizon as she was driven to Hollywood. To fantasy land. And television's Fantasy Island and her first line, 'Who is he, Naomi?' It was the start of the climb from supermarket to superstar.