BEAUTIFUL..? SOME DAYS I JUST WANT TO CRAWL UNDER A ROCK

Michelle Pfeiffer admits it's hard to see her stunning looks fade but she is relishing her screen return
By Siobhan Synnot

AT the age of 48, she admits she has achieved everything she ever hoped for.

Yet, this year Michelle Pfeiffer has put her family life on hold for two films. In Stardust she plays an evil sorceress in a fantasy epic with Robert De Niro, Claire Danes and Sienna Miller.

But before that she stars opposite John Travolta in the all-singing, all-dancing movie Hairspray, where she plays former beauty queen Velma von Tussel.

John Travolta will play the downtrodden housewife Edna Turnblad and Queen Latifah is Motormouth Maybelle, a civil rights activist and TV host.

The film is a musical version of a 1988 picture about teenagers on a Baltimore dance show - and a blast from the past for real-life former beauty queen Michelle, who held the title of Miss Orange County almost 30 years ago.

"Honestly, I don't feel older," said Michelle.

But age catches up even with superstars - in the form of fine lines, and a serious glasses habit.

Without her lemon-tinted specs, Michelle says she's blind as a bat but growing old gracefully remains one of her goals.

"I certainly see that I've changed. I just try not to dwell on it. Now it's easier than it was in my early 40s," she said. "I'm over that hump. Ageing happens to every single one of us. Once you accept that, it unburdens you."

Yet she admits she's thought about plastic surgery.

"I toy with it. When I'm rested, taking good care of myself, exercising, happy, I think I look pretty OK. I can hold off on that facelift for another few years. But when I'm feeling weary, then I think, maybe I better make that appointment.

"On the one hand, I've seen some amazing-looking plastic surgery. But who knows if that's what you'll get? There are some freakish things going on right now."

In an industry where being beautiful is almost a pre-requisite, Michelle insists she had to work harder in the beginning because people always assumed all she had going for her was herlooks.

Even after almost 20 years and some 30 films, Michelle still admits to feeling insecure about how good an actress she really is - despite three Oscar nominations.

"I always think that I'm going to be found out on the next one," she admitted. "I always think they'll go, 'She's really bad at this'."

And the sultry star is uncomfortable with the glamorous image that had men swooning over her singing Making Whoopee on top of a grand piano in The Fabulous Baker Boys, moodily snarling at a hostile class of ghetto kids in Dangerous Minds and clad in skin-tight black leather as Catwoman in Batman Returns.

"I look good with the right lighting. But you should see me when I'm at home, painting and there's sweat dripping down, and paint on my upper lip," said Michelle. Her Hair-spray character never stops reminding everyone of her beauty queen past - but Michelle says she has done everything in her power to bury her beauty myth.

Not until Jonathan Demme cast her in Married To The Mob in 1988 did Hollywood begin to see her as more than just another pretty face.

Michelle insists her early days in acting were a battle against typecasting. "I got a lot of, 'You know, sorry, you're too pretty'," she said.

Michelle famously rejected leading roles in the movies Basic Instinct, Silence of the Lambs, Sleepless in Seattle and Thelma & Louise.

"I learned quickly that part of how you look is how you are cast," she explained. "It's damaging if you grow up being told you're beautiful, because that becomes a part of how you see yourself.

"There are definitely times when I feel beautiful but, at times, I want to crawl under a rock. And some days, I get mad. The older I get, the more gracefully I handle it but, some days, it just bugs me.

" I actually said to a woman the other day, 'Are you going to stare at me all evening?' I was upset about what was going on in the world and my defences were down, and it just came out. Anyway, it passed and I felt kind of shameful."

Over the years there have been other, younger leading ladies - but Nicole Kidman does not have Michelle's cool sexiness or Julia Roberts her sculpted beauty.

These days, however, Hollywood takes second place to her family.

Indeed, Michelle no longer lives in Hollywood but quietly at the other end of California with her husband, David E. Kelley, their son John Henry, 12, and adopted daughter, Claudia Rose, 14.

In fact, when her children started school, she said she had to confess she was quite a famous actress, so they would be prepared for classmates talking about her movies.

Her homelife is a cross between domestic goddess and zookeeper. The family have three dogs, a cat, tree frog, horses and a pair of miniature donkeys.

"They suffer from depression if they're alone, so we had to get two," said Michelle. "They're pretty darn cute, these tiny things with enormous eyes and huge ears. They're smaller than the dog."

Growing up in a small town in California, Michelle always felt like a fish out of water. The eldest daughter of an air-conditioning businessman and his wife, she studied to be a court reporter and even thought about becoming a psychiatrist

Instead, she started a series of part-time jobs when she was only 14 and said she remembers thinking, "This is my life and I hate it - what am I going to do?"

In 1977, she summoned the courage to have professional photos taken. Next thing she knew, she had won the 1978 Miss Orange County contest, got an agent and made her television debut in late 1978 with an episode on the popular series Fantasy Island.

She married actor Peter Horton in 1981, but the couple broke up seven years later.

After a three-year romance with toyboy Fisher Stevens, she didn't want to wait for a husband to start a family, so she adopted Claudia Rose.

"I think she was an angel," Michelle says of her daughter, whom she brought home in March 1993. "From the day I started waiting for her to come, I've had a completely different life."

Michelle met writer David E. Kelley, the creator of Ally McBeal and The Practice, shortly after the adoption went through. The pair went bowling with a gang of mutual pals and the attraction was instant.

They married in November 1993 and had Jack the following August.

Despite Hollywood's endless fascination with youth, she says that right now things couldn't be better personally and professionally.

"I think that even though the roles might be fewer, I think they're better and I think I enjoy the work more than I ever have," she said.

"And this whole kind of youth thing comes in cycles, you kind of wait it through and then people are ready for something new."

Adding: "Or something old."

'I learned quickly part of how you look is how you are cast. It's damaging if you grow up being told you're beautiful, it becomes a part of how you see yourself'

'Roles might be fewer but I think they're better and I enjoy the work more than ever'