At 51, Michelle Pfeiffer Pays Little Mind To Age, Fame or Beauty. Why Should She?

By Dan Zak

The Washington Post

June 28, 2009

NEW YORK -- The list of things Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't want to hear includes this sentence: 'The way I see it, your golden age was 1987 to 1993.'

And yet some of us are idiots, and say it anyway.

She responds to this declaration with silence. The hotel room freezes over. So, we fumble: Do you, um, think in those terms? In phases?

'No, not really,' she says softly.

An excruciating pause follows. We contemplate throwing ourselves through the window, hoping the awkwardness dies when we hit Park Avenue. Perhaps we'll be licked back to life by a herd of stray cats.

The silence continues. Her blue eyes shimmer. She will win this staring contest.

'I sort of don't look back.'

At all?

'No, not really,' she repeats. Then the ice thaws a bit. 'I've always had this fear of getting stuck in the past. Becoming, like, Norma Desmond or something.'

* * *

Michelle Pfeiffer -- siren of cinema, three-time Oscar nominee, the woman on the cover of People's first-ever issue of 'The 50 Most Beautiful People in World' -- is 51 years old.

Gloria Swanson was 51 when she played the delusional diva Norma Desmond in 'Sunset Boulevard,' a cruel back-lot drama about a movie star whose glamour wilted to grotesquerie as her audience moved on to newer, younger idols.

But to become Norma, a star must believe in her own stardom. Norma watches her own movies all day, holed up in her mausoleum of a mansion. Michelle, when she catches 'The Witches of Eastwick' on cable, switches the channel. She'll watch her movies once, but never again. She's too critical of her work, she says. It's painful to watch.

She's been a movie star for 25 years, but no part of the job seems to work for her. Michelle Pfeiffer hates parties. She hates premieres. She's bad at interviews. She mourns the privacy she sacrificed long ago, though moving her family to Northern California and taking a five-year hiatus from movies helped a bit. If she had her way, she would not be cooped up in a hotel room in Manhattan talking about her latest movie, 'Cheri,' even though it's her first real lead role in almost a decade -- never mind those two recent movies that went straight to DVD.

Twenty years ago she played a doe-eyed girl victimized by social predators in 'Dangerous Liaisons.' Now, in another adaptation of French literature with the same director, she plays a wealthy courtesan named Lea de Lonval who starts to feel the tiny ravages of time when she shacks up with a man half her age.

'Mmm,' she says, contemplating these career bookends. 'Literally, the virgin and the whore. And everything in between, from then until now.'

Where is Michelle Pfeiffer now?

Hard to say. She's coy. She sits right here, close enough for her wrinkles to show, but she might as well be a million miles away. The eyes are otherworldly. The face seems cared for, but not drastically altered. She looks -- everybody says this -- good. And it matters. Beauty is an integral part of her career, and now she's playing a character who must reconcile her aging looks with her chosen profession.

The pfans, naturally, are excited for this movie, which came out last week. You know, the pfans, with a 'pf'?

'The what?' she asks.

The pfans.

'I don't know what that is,' she says.

P-F-A-N-S. The people whose pfoolish hearts pfell pfor you, your pface, your pfilms, etc. They're the wonderful people out there, in the dark reaches of blogosphere, who kept talking about you while you were gone, who refer to you as 'our Michelle.'

'Oh, my gosh,' she says, laughing. 'Like Trekkies. I have fans. I have puh-fans. They say things? They talk to each other? Well, you know, I'm not connected in that way. It's probably healthier. I don't have time, honestly.'

She laughs again. This is either rehearsed ignorance or gee-whiz nonchalance. Either way, the sound you hear is a million pfan hearts breaking.

* * *

Her voice lowers to a horrified whisper when talking about one of her first jobs in Hollywood. She played a character called Bombshell in a 1979 TV series spinoff of 'Animal House.'

'Oh my gosh, it was so bad,' she says, almost inaudibly, crossing her eyes for effect. 'And I wore hot pants and high heels, and they had falsies on me out to here. It was just really horrible and, in a way, it was a blessing because I never wanted to go back to that.'

Born in Santa Ana, Calif., Pfeiffer was a beach bum who bagged groceries at Vons supermarket and was crowned Miss Orange County in the late '70s. She got an agent and played Tony Danza's girlfriend, Suzie Q, a waitress who dreams of becoming an actress, in 1980's 'The Hollywood Knights.' Two years later, with no vocal or dance training, she strutted her way through 'Grease 2' in a pink satin jacket. No one came out of that movie looking good, which is why,

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