SHE MADE HER DREAMS COME TRUE

By Dotson Rader

"I spent alot of timefumbling around, not trusting my feelings," Michelle Pfeiffer said. "But when I decided to stop needing the approval of other people and just move forward and trust my heart, my life changed 360 degrees for the better."

Pfeiffer, 45, has starred in more than 30 films and received three Oscar nominations since appearing in Grease 2 in 1982. Her latest movie, Sinbad: Legend of the seven seas, will be released on July 2. But for a long time, her personal life was not as successful. "I'd always wanted to have a family," she said, "but I had almost given up. I thought all I might ever have is a series of relationships, like many actresses do."

I met with Pfeiffer in Los Angeles to learn how she finally came to have that family and how her life had changed.

Michelle Pfeiffer grew up in Midway City, Calif., a nondescript suburb south of Los Angeles. She is one of four children of Richard Pfeiffer, an air conditioning contractor, and his wife Donna. "Where I was raised was very conventional, very inside the box," she said. "Being honest, doing the right thing, working hard--those things were drummed into us by my father. I got my work ethic from him. My mother was a stay at home mom. She told me, "Make sure you have a career before you settle down."

Pfeiffer was a pretty, somewhat aimless adolescent, a dreamer who liked to hang out with surfers at Hunnington Beach. "I had this dormant dream about being an actor, and it was pure fantasy," she said. "Become an actor? it wasn't realistic, not where I come from."

But at 20, while working at a Vons Supermakret, Pfeiffer decided to make the fantasy a reality. Her hairdresser gave her an application for the 1978 Miss Orange County beauty pageant and told her that one judge was an agent. "I nearly threw him out of the house!" Pfeiffer recalled. "Being in a beauty pageant was the last thing I wanted to do. But I didn't know any other inroad into the business." She won that contest and went on to the next round. "I didn't win," she said, "but I met the judge, and he became my agent."

Within a year, Pfeiffer landed her first TV role-a bit part on Delta House. She made her film debut in 1980 in the forgettable Hollywood Knights. Her big break came a year later when she auditioned for a movie muscial, Grease 2.

"I'd never auditioned singing before," she recalled. "It was the worst. Still, the director called me back to dance. I'm even lessa dancer than a singer. But I have this sink or swim mentality, this combination of navete and gumption. The director loved my determination."

Grease 2 brought Pfeiffer attention. Her next role, as Al Pacino's wife in Scarface, earner her critical praise. And the Witches of Eastwick, co-starring Jack Nicholson, established her as an international star.

Yet her dreams of a family were not fairing as well. In 1981, just before she became a star, Pfeiffer married actor Peter Horton. They divorced nine years later.

"I changed so much in the time I was married to Peter," she recalled. "I was young, and then we both grew up. Relationships really have to redefine themselves as you grow older, or else you lose touch with the other person. We were never able to redefine the relationship."

After her divorce, she was romantically involved with a series of actors, reportedly including, Michael Keaton, John Malkovich, Val Kilmer, and Fisher Stevens. Some hurt. None lasted.

"There are always red flags in a relationship," she explained. "You get stuck in situations and live in denial for a long time, because it's hard to discover what you really need. It's trial by error. I don't think we're meant to spend our lives with everyone we have a relationship with, Mine ended because they weren't meant for a lifetime."

Then, in 1993, when she was 34 and at the peak of her career, Pfeiffer decided to adopt a child as a single mother.

"I'd always wanted to adopt," she said. "I hadn't given up on men-I just didn't want to wait anymore. Marraige might never happen. I very consciously decided to trust my feelings when I adopted Claudia. She was a gift from God, a healing force in my life. Adopting her was the beginning of my family, and I believe she brought David to me. It was destined."

David E. Kelley, 47, has been the writer/producer of Ally Mcbeal, The Practice, Boston Public, and other TV dramas. He and Pfeiffer met on a blind date, a bowling night with mutual friends.

"It was a disaster!" she recalled, laughing. "He was cute, but we didn't talk to eachother. We were both too shy. He called a couple days later, and we couldn't quite get another date together, because he said he was busy. I had never dated a writer, and I kept thinking "well, how busy can you be?" We finally dated again. He intrigued me. He still does. I'd pretty much only dated actors before, and you know who they are right away. But David's complicated-very, very internal. I'm always learning something new about him."

She smiled. "I met David a couple weeks after Claudias birthmother and I decided to start adoption proceddings. The baby was coming, only now it was David and me waiting for her, I thought, "This will seperate the men from the boys. We'll see what David's made of."

"You fall in love with a man in stages, and it took me a long time to trust that love. I was fully prepared for him to flee. He didn't. He astonished me. He was with me when my daughter arrived home."

Eith months later, she married Kelley. "I think without Claudia I would have messed it up," she said. A year later, their son, John Henry, was born. "I wanted another child. I thought it would take a while but then, boom! Literally on our wedding night, I got pregnant."

"The birth of a child changes you," Pfeiffer said. "Suddenly, you're in the prescence of a kind of purity. Everything shifts and is honed down to its essence, and you realize that the things you thought were so important are ridiculous. You begin to see what really matters."

Claudia is now 10, and John Henry is 8. "I want my husband and my children to be happy and fulfilled as human beings," Pfeiffer said. "I want their lives to have meaning and purpose. That's what I care about now."

Article/Interview taken out from PARADE Magazine (USA) June, 2003
by Michelle Pfeiffer, The Face