Fourteen
Miss Perfection had begun - Miss "perfección" ha nacido

Michelle Pfeiffer was excited before the new challenge, her first important film, Grease 2. Everything was happening so quickly. Allan Carr produced with Robert Stigwood who had a longtime association with the Bee Gees. The group's younger brother Andy Gibb, who would later die of a drug overdose, was the image writers were given to pen their character around. Other contenders for the Michael Carrington role were Shaun Cassidy, David Cassidy's brother, Greg Evigan, who was then the star of the popular TV series BJ and the Bear, rock 'n' roller Rex Smith and singer Rick Springfield. It was Caulfield who was the casting wild card who trumped the others.

Rock star Pat Benatar, Andrea McCardle, who created the role of Annie on Broadway, Lisa Hartman, who was the 'very hot' star of television's Valley of the Dolls, and actress Kristy McNichol were all strong contenders to be the leader of the Pink Ladies. Pfeiffer was the female wild card. The casting interviews and screen tests went on for some months at a cost of around $150,000. Pfeiffer never even tested opposite Caulfield, but did so well working with Shaun Cassidy that she won the role. A role on which much of a $12 million budget was riding.

Allan Carr had his two stars. Typically, he announced that he had got them both for $100,000. Lorna Luft, Judy Garland's other daughter, was cast as the man-hungry blonde Paula Rebchuck in her film debut. And there was gimmick casting with one-time screen idol Tab Hunter and the bubbly, blonde Connie Stevens - both actors were sixties heart-throbs - cast as teachers at Rydell High.

Pat Birch had never directed a film before. 'I wanted to make Grease 2 more romantic than the first one and to celebrate greasers.' The problem was the promised dazzling charisma of her two leading players. 'I just knew the chemistry would be good between Maxwell and Michelle', predicted Birch before the film took a bath from the critics She tries to shrug off stories that Caulfield and Pfeiffer ended the film loathing each other. Caulfield, always the brash one, said, 'Michelle and I got along infamously.'

But during filming it was Pfeiffer who worked to make her first lead role work. She had a scene to do that did no directly involve Caulfield. But she felt it was necessary that he be on the sound stage while she was filming he scene. It helped her. The genesis of Miss Perfection had begun, Other actors on the film remember Caulfield being summoned from lunch and then returning to announce 'This time they had me sitting at the top of a fucking lad der. Michelle wanted me there. I wasn't even on camera'. Pfeiffer's intent was clearer later after she had proved such a perfectionist in film. She wanted to do her best work and true to her acting classes wanted the subject of he scene to be in her if not the camera's focus.

There was little evidence of this determination when Pfeiffer, wearing-jeans and a white T-shirt and no make up, sat at a corner table at Gladstones 4 Fish restaurant, which sits smack on the Pacific Ocean where Sunset Boulevard dead-ends in the Pacific Coast Highway. It was the summer of 1982, and Grease 2 was about to appear on the world's cinema screens.

Pfeiffer - you wouldn't recognize her from her nineties' look - was pleasant, a little shy and wary. You wonder now if she was still shaky from her cult-devotee days. She ordered a salad -Gladstones do even the individual orders in such lavish style they could keep generations of rabbits - but only nibbled at it. The buzz words were all there. Grease 2 was part of a 'wonderful' year. She had married Peter Horton. She was 'happy' with her performance in the film and 'proud' of her work in it. She also said, 'I didn't let Grease 2 go to my head.'

And then, in that early interview, she made comments that had much subtext:

'My character Stephanie is the first of her group to break away, to start to be independent. And in real life that's frightening. We laugh about it now, but everything is so serious at that age, like the end of the world ... I think that's why I became an actress. I was so dramatic. I felt everything to the extreme.'

She talked about the plot as though it were the ugly duckling turning into the swan. You have to think of her own life at that time as she said, 'Through the whole film Stephanie changes from being a tomboy kind of snot to a tough little brat. But in the end she turns into a young lady.' Allan Carr and Patricia Birch could have been typecasting without having any notion that they were doing so.

Credits: Picture #5 - Bond's Michelle Pfeiffer Web Page