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THE BEST OF MICHELLE PFEIFFER

Michelle Pfeiffer. Just saying her name makes me smile. I’m not even kidding. Let me start right there, because I don’t want to ease into this one.


Michelle Pfeiffer is one of my favorite actresses on the planet, and I’ve been in love with her work since 1980 when I saw her in The Hollywood Knights, that ridiculous, kind of wonderful, kind of trashy, kind of awesome knockoff of American Graffiti with Tony Danza and Robert Wuhl and Fran Drescher and Stuart Pankin.


She’s in there, early days, and I remember it like it was yesterday: she shows up on screen and my teenage brain goes, “Wait…who is that?” And I’ve basically been asking that question for forty-five years, because even when she’s in a movie that doesn’t quite work, she’s still the thing that works. That’s her superpower.


Now, the straight stuff first, because it matters. Michelle Marie Pfeiffer, born April 29, 1958, Santa Ana, California. Orange County. Fountain Valley High School. Worked as a checkout girl at Vons.


Did the beauty pageant circuit, Miss Orange County in 1978, got an agent, started auditioning, and suddenly she’s popping up in late-’70s television. Fantasy Island, CHiPs, that whole era where you could tell she was learning on the job and Hollywood was mostly casting her because, well, look at her.


She has even said as much, that she was playing bimbos and cashing in on her looks while she learned how to act. And what’s amazing is she actually did learn how to act, and then she became one of the best. That’s not a guarantee. A lot of people get stuck in the looks lane forever. Pfeiffer busted out of it.


Then comes Grease 2 in 1982. A flop, but she stands out. And then, boom, 1983, Scarface. Brian De Palma’s operatic, insane, cocaine-dusted epic, and there she is as Elvira Hancock, chilly and glamorous and bored to death by the monsters around her.


That performance is a career launch rocket. It basically erased everyone’s memory of Grease 2 overnight. And from there she starts stacking interesting choices.


Into the Night with John Landis, dark and sexy and strange. Ladyhawke, where she’s so ethereally beautiful it’s almost unfair to the rest of the cast. Sweet Liberty. Amazon Women on the Moon.


And then she hits The Witches of Eastwick in 1987, which I know is beloved by a lot of people and it’s the only George Miller movie I don’t like, but come on, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer in one movie is basically a cinematic gift basket.


She rides that into the late ‘80s and early ‘90s like a freight train. Married to the Mob, which gets her the first of that run of Golden Globe nominations and really shows her comic instincts. Dangerous Liaisons, a movie I don’t like, but she is the best thing in it, because she somehow makes virtue compelling, which is like making plain toast fascinating.


Then The Fabulous Baker Boys, which is one of the greatest star-making performances ever captured on film. That’s not hyperbole, that’s just fact. She wins the Golden Globe for it and gets an Oscar nomination, and it becomes one of those defining “Oh, she’s not just a movie star, she’s an actress” moments.


The accolades are ridiculous, and deserved: she’s got three Oscar nominations across her career and a pile of major awards recognition, including that Golden Globe win and a BAFTA win.


By the early ‘90s she’s one of the biggest, most bankable stars in the world, and she’s doing what I love when a star hits that level: she doesn’t just play it safe. She’s Catwoman in Batman Returns and she is, without question, the best Catwoman of all time. I don’t care who wants to argue. It’s not even close.


She’s also producing. She forms Via Rosa Productions and helps get projects made, including stuff like Dangerous Minds, and that’s important because her story isn’t just “beautiful actress becomes movie star.”


She’s also steering her own ship, putting her money and taste behind material, which is a whole other level of power in Hollywood.


And then she does what a lot of people don’t do when they’re at the top: she steps back.


She prioritizes family, reduces her workload, pops up in select projects. What Lies Beneath is one of my favorite movies, and she is extraordinary in it, just locked in, carrying that Hitchcockian ride with pure movie-star intelligence.


Then White Oleander, dark and underrated, and she’s magnetic. Then later, after a stretch where people like me are going, “Where the hell is Michelle Pfeiffer, why aren’t we getting more Michelle Pfeiffer,” she comes roaring back in 2017 with stuff like mother!, Murder on the Orient Express, and that HBO film The Wizard of Lies where she gets an Emmy nomination portraying Ruth Madoff.


And now she’s still doing it. She’s in the Marvel world as Janet van Dyne. She’s doing projects on her terms. She’s still, somehow, jaw-droppingly beautiful in a way that makes you angry at the laws of nature.


But here’s the thing that I think gets lost in all the “she’s gorgeous” talk: she is smart. She is committed. She is precise. She is one of those rare performers who can be icy, vulnerable, hilarious, ferocious, sexy, heartbreaking, and terrifying, sometimes in the same scene, without ever seeming like she’s showing off.


She’s like a character actress who happens to look like a screen goddess, which sounds like a cliché until you watch the work and realize it’s the only way to describe what she does.


And the timing is perfect, because she’s back back on TV in a big way with The Madison, the Taylor Sheridan/Paramount+ series set in the Yellowstone universe, with Pfeiffer starring as Stacy Clyburn.


That’s the kind of thing that makes me ridiculously happy because any excuse to have more Michelle Pfeiffer in my life is a good excuse.


So that’s what this is. A tribute. A celebration. A reminder. And also, selfishly, an excuse for me to talk about an actress I’ve adored forever.


I’m ranking my ten favorite Michelle Pfeiffer performances in films, in order of preference, and here’s the key: I’m not just picking movies where she’s great, because she’s great in almost everything.


I’m picking the ones where she’s great and the movie is good or great too. The full package. The ones you can recommend without adding, “Well, the movie stinks, but she’s terrific.” No, these are the ones you put on and you go, “This is why she’s one of the best.”


In honor of The Madison hitting Paramount+ in March, and in honor of one of the most talented, most versatile, most consistently watchable actresses Hollywood has ever produced, here are my Top 10 favorite Michelle Pfeiffer performances in films, ranked in my personal preference order.


TOP 10 MICHELLE PFEIFFER FILMS (in order of preference):


This is the one. This is the performance where Michelle Pfeiffer stops being “that incredibly beautiful actress who’s really good” and becomes, without question, one of the great screen presences of her generation.


Susie Diamond is tough, wounded, funny, sexy, exhausted, hungry, and still somehow hopeful, and Pfeiffer plays every single note without ever forcing it. She’s doing acting with her eyes, with the way she holds a cigarette, with the way she leans into a line like she’s testing the world to see if it’s going to hit her back.


And yes, the “Makin’ Whoopee” piano scene is iconic for a reason, but the real greatness is everything around it, the quiet stuff, the heartbreak under the swagger, the way she makes you feel like you’re watching a real person instead of a performance. This is a masterclass.


The best Catwoman of all time. End of discussion. Pfeiffer takes Selina Kyle, who on paper could’ve been just comic book kink and cool Tim Burton goth-glam, and she makes her a full-blown tragic figure.


She’s funny, she’s scary, she’s seductive, she’s furious, she’s heartbreaking, and she’s also weirdly relatable in that “I’ve been pushed around too long and now I’m snapping” way. The physical performance is insane, the voice work is perfect, and every time she’s on screen she hijacks the movie.


Michael Keaton can be doing his great, brooding Batman thing, Danny DeVito is oozing around as Penguin, and Pfeiffer still walks away with it. She owns that film.


This is one of the first times you really see how good she is at comedy without losing the humanity underneath. She’s playing Angela de Marco, this mob wife who’s trying to get out of the life, and she’s got the accent, the hair, the attitude, the vulnerability, the whole package.


It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s satirical, and Pfeiffer is the engine. She makes the romantic stuff work, she makes the screwball stuff work, and she makes you root for her the whole time.


It’s also one of those roles where she deliberately messes with the “glamour goddess” image and proves she can be messy and real and still completely magnetic.


This is Pfeiffer in full movie-star mode, but with actual depth, which is her specialty. She’s mysterious, intelligent, emotionally guarded, and you can feel the politics and paranoia around her without her ever having to announce it.


The chemistry with Sean Connery is terrific, and what I love is how she plays strength in a quiet way. Not loud, not showy. Just this steady, complicated presence.


She makes the espionage romance feel like it has real stakes, like two adults who’ve been hurt before are cautiously stepping toward each other. It’s elegant work.


One of my favorite thrillers, and she carries it. This is Robert Zemeckis having a blast doing his Hitchcock obsession, and Pfeiffer is the perfect centerpiece because she can make you believe anything.


She sells the domestic calm, the creeping dread, the paranoia, the grief, the unraveling. She’s doing so much with so little, and the movie just keeps tightening the screws on her, and she never breaks the spell.


A lot of actors would overplay the “I’m scared” stuff. She doesn’t. She makes it feel lived-in. And when the movie goes full thriller, she’s still grounded, still smart, still compelling. She’s the reason it works as well as it does.


This is Pfeiffer returning and reminding everyone, that she can walk into a masterful nightmare allegory and steal the whole damn movie. She’s electric in this. Seductive, intrusive, manipulative, charming, cruel... sometimes all in the same scene.


She’s like a human pressure point. Every time she shows up, the tension spikes. And the crazy thing is, in a movie that is deliberately off-putting and chaotic, Pfeiffer is the one who feels the most alive. She gives it flavor. She gives it danger. She gives it that “what is she going to do next?” energy. It’s fearless, and it’s fun to watch her cut loose like that.


Elvira Hancock. Ice queen. Trophy wife. Cocaine ghost drifting through De Palma’s operatic madness. Pfeiffer is perfect here because she doesn’t try to make Elvira likable, and she doesn’t play her as a cartoon either. She’s numb. She’s trapped. She’s judging everyone in the room because she knows they’re all doomed.


And she looks like a million bucks while doing it, which is part of the point. This is the performance that made her a star. It’s controlled, stylish, and quietly devastating if you’re paying attention under all the screaming and the chainsaws and the mountains of powder.


This movie is basically a handsome, glossy late-’80s adult crime-romance triangle, and Pfeiffer is the reason it has any heat. She plays Jo Ann Vallenari, the restaurant owner caught between Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell, and she gives it that mix of intelligence and vulnerability that she always brings.


She’s not just “the love interest.” She’s a person with her own moral compass, her own loneliness, her own desire to believe in something better than the men circling her. And of course she’s radiant, but what matters is the emotional shading. She gives the movie its soul.


Pfeiffer as Velma Von Tussle is proof that she can go broad, go big, go musical, go cartoonish, and still be completely in control. She’s deliciously evil. She’s funny. She’s committed.


She plays the nastiness as the ugliest part of the character, but she also understands the tone of the movie, that heightened John Waters-ish universe filtered through a big studio musical. And she nails it. Plus, she’s having a blast, and you can feel it. It’s one of those performances where you watch her and think, “God, I’ve missed this side of her.”


This is one of those movies that not enough people talk about, and Pfeiffer is quietly terrific in it. It’s a story that could’ve been pure melodrama, but she finds the raw, human pain underneath. She plays a mother shattered by loss, guilt, and the kind of grief that never really goes away, it just changes shape. And she doesn’t milk it. She doesn’t play for tears.


She plays it like a real person trying to function while carrying an impossible weight. That restraint is what makes it hit. It’s a deeply felt performance, and she’s the anchor of the whole film.



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