| Star Profile
WHITE-HOT MICHELLE
By Rob Lowing
SHE'S young, she's sexy, she's hot. And, after a year in
which she was "more NOT in control than I've ever been
in my life", actress Michelle Pfeiffer
shows no inclination to play it safe.
Career wise, playing with fire has seen 31 year old Pfeiffer
branded "white hot",
one of Harper's Bazaars Ten Most Beautiful
Women in the World and the Blonde
Venus with the Grace Kelly face.
Last year, she moved gracefully from the lush period drama
of Dangerous Liaisons to
the glossy modern thrills of Tequila
Sunrise with Mel Gibson.
This year, career gambling has had mixed results. On the
one hand, she was recently, and savagely, panned for her New
York stage debut in Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night.
But then, a bigger risk the chance to sing in her new film,
The Fabulous Baker Boys
has paid off. She's hitting strong notes and scoring high
marks for the "Pfeiffer purr" and "sultry vibrato"
in her rendition of Makin' Whoopee.
After shooting four films back to back in the past 18 months,
Pfeiffer can afford to relax with a thumbs up from the critics
and ditto from the public (who recently voted her one of 1989s
sexiest stars in a US Magazine's
readers poll).
She can also relish a period in which her name and that of
lovers like Michael Keaton and
John Malkovich isn't gracing
the front pages.
Pfeiffer is taking a breather, not only from romance but
also from career decisions.
"I was once told that being able
to turn down a part was the only thing that would ever give
me power," says Pfeiffer.
Now, her $1 million per film fee and leading lady status
means that she can choose her roles "very, very carefully".
That power to choose is backed up, she adds mischievously,
by having a father who insisted that she maintain a savings
account from the time she was 14.
An ability to conserve the cash was a big asset when the
check out chick from Vons supermarket, Orange County, California,
ex-surfer girl and high school dropout, decided to try acting.
It was as simple as standing at the counter, remembers Pfeiffer
"and wondering, what do I really
want to do with my life?"
One beauty contest later, 18 years-old Pfeiffer had an LA
agent and a new address in Hollywood.
She also had years of boring modelling assignments ahead
of her ("If I left an audition
feeling that at I had made a complete jerk of myself, I usually
got the job"), short lived TV series like Delta
House (she played padded up character simply called
Bombshell) and the Grease
II.
At this point, Pfeiffer could barely afford the luxury of
turning down roles – but she did. Refusing “to
be put into hot pants again”, she began going
after parts she wanted.
She won them: Scarface
with Al Pacino, Ladyhawke
with Rutger Hauer, The
Witches Of Eastwick with Cher
and Jack Nicholson.
Meanwhile, her love life was also becoming more varied –
and volatile. With success came divorce from her husband of
eight years, thirtysomething
star Peter Horton.
As Horton exited, Pfeiffer regretted the end of “a
great marriage to a great man” and started making
headlines wuth three new beaus.
First came the romance with her Married
To The Mob co-star Alec Baldwin.
Then, as production wrapped, Baldwin exited and Pfeiffer was
spotted with Batman star
Michael Keaton.
But the biggest headlines of all were reserved for her dalliance
with John Malkovich while both
were making Dangerous Liaisons.
Pfeiffer would eventually walk off with an Oscar nomination
for Best Supporting Actress, but not with Malkovich. After
a highly-publicised split with his wife, Glenne
Headley, star of Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels, Malkovich then left Pfeiffer and
returned to hearth and home.
After dazzling the romantics with her tangled love life,
Pfeiffer now appears to prefer the public escort of her brother
or her agent, Ed Limato.
Still, even a more reserved public image can't dim Pfeiffer's
screen image as the new Golden Girl of Hollywood.
From being nothing but a blonde bombshell among hundreds
of others in Hollywood, Pfeiffer has demonstrated the screen
sexiness which puts her up in the leading lady category along
with Kim Basinger, Kathleen
Turner and Cher.
But, if she now has the freedom to choose, even she cannot
guarantee success.
Mindful of the fact that on Dangerous
Liaisons she was the only actor without stage experience,
she elected to do a theatre production of Twelfth
Night, playing Olivia in New York’s Shakespeare
In The Park.
Her stage debut, in September, was not a success as noted
theatre critic Clive Barnes panned
her with the damning, "On stage,
Pfeiffer is a cipher. And she speaks Shakespeare abominably."
If stage proved unrewarding, her next project appears to
be a happier choice.
And riskier. Pfeiffer describes singing in the $11.5 million
The Fabulous Baker Boys,
released here next February, as a scary experience.
Her last on screen warbling had been in 1982's widely panned
Grease II in which, after
winning a nationwide talent search, Pfeiffer had both sung
and danced.
As Pfeiffer points out, in seven years she hasn't had a voice
lesson. Back then, she also "didn't
smoke two packets of cigarettes a day"
"I was terrified. It had been
years since I sang and even then I was never a professional
singer. Two months before the movie started, I started taking
lessons."
In The Fabulous Baker Boys,
Pfeiffer plays Susie Diamond, a cocktail singer and lounge
lizardess who proceeds to dazzle small-potatoes nightclub
act the Baker Brothers (played by real life brothers Jeff
and Beau Bridges). Pfeiffer may
have flunked Shakespeare but her sexy shimmy across a black
concert grand piano, crooning Makin’ Whoopee, has left
American critics breathless, calling it a “show stopper”,
“white hot”, “an erotic collusion between
camera and star”.
In return, Pfeiffer compliments the script, describing Susie
as “one of the most alive characters
that I’ve played. She’s a kind of life force.
There’s something of the gypsy about her.”
“There’s a kind of purity
in her honesty that I respect. She’s not afraid to take
risks and she doesn’t lie to herself. If she makes a
mistake, she doesn’t blame anybody else”. |
