Early on in her career, Michelle Pfeiffer became known for her performance in films such as The Fabulous Baker Boys, Dangerous Liaisons, Love Field, Married to the Mob and of course, Scarface. At the same time, she also famously suited up to play Catwoman in the 1992 DC film Batman Returns, which was directed by the legendary Tim Burton.
At the height of her career, it looked like everything was going well for Pfeiffer. She earned three Oscar nominations early and kept on booking more roles. But then came a time when she wasn’t around as much, onscreen at least. She also seemed to have disappeared from Hollywood at one point before staging a comeback of sorts. And if you ask Pfeiffer herself, she believes she was gone because she managed to make herself unhirable.
She Made Her Mark In The 80s
After starring in several tv series and tv movies, Pfeiffer finally made her big-screen debut in the 1982 film Grease 2. She had auditioned for it even though she really had no experience working in musicals. “I went on a lark,” Pfeiffer recalled during an appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden. “My agent said, ‘Oh just go.’ I wasn’t a dancer, I wasn’t a singer, and I was in this short purple skirt with go-go boots and we had the dancing auditions.” Unfortunately, this sequel was a flop. Nonetheless, it led to Pfeiffer’s breakout role in Brian De Palma’s Scarface.
Being relatively new to feature films at that time, Pfeiffer was slightly unsure if she could pull it off. “It was a hard movie for me because Grease 2 had been my last credit, and I was really terrified,” the actress told Interview in 2012. “I was very excited to work with Al Pacino, but I was also intimidated by him.” Despite the intimidation, Pfeiffer held her own.
In the coming years, she also went on to star in several other hit films. Pfeiffer got her Oscar nods for her work in Dangerous Liaisons, The Fabulous Baker Boys, and Love Field. She also won praise for her performance in The Witches of Eastwick, One Fine Day, The Age of Innocence, What Lies Beneath, and Up Close & Personal. She was also nearly cast in Silence of the Lambs, but she was uninterested in the part, telling The New Yorker, “It was that evil won in the end, that at the end of that film evil ruled out. I was uncomfortable with that ending.”
It seemed that Pfeiffer could book just about any role she wanted. Instead, however, the veteran actress ended up disappearing a few years at a time.
This Is Why Michelle Pfeiffer Thinks She Became ‘Unhirable’
As Pfeiffer got older, she turned her focus on her family (and rightfully so). Nonetheless, she kept on looking at possible roles, although she became more critical of what she would accept. “I’m a more balanced person honestly when I’m working,” Pfeiffer told Darren Aronofsky during a conversation for interview. “But I was pretty careful about where I shot, how long I was away, whether or not it worked out with the kids’ schedule.”
As a result, Pfeiffer felt that she lost her casting appeal, leading to years of absence from the movies. “And I got so picky that I was unhirable,” the actress explained. “And then … I don’t know, time just went on.” In another interview, Pfeiffer also said that she could see how “it became so complicated to hire me that it just probably wasn’t worth it.” When that happened, she also admitted, “It just became easier not to work most of the time.” That said, she told Toronto Sun, “It’s not that I went into an official hiatus.”
Last year, amidst the global pandemic that shut Hollywood down for months, Pfeiffer managed to star in her best film yet. It’s a dark comedy/drama entitled French Exit, which earned the veteran actress her eighth Golden Globe nomination. For Azazel Jacobs, the film’s director, Pfeiffer landed on “the top of the list” after seeing her performance in The Wizard of Lies and Mother!, the Aronofsky horror/thriller that essentially heralded Pfeiffer’s big comeback . “Michelle’s recent work showed me somebody who was still very hungry, even though she had proven herself,” he told Town & Country. “So I sent her the script. When I heard that she wanted to meet, I did my best to prepare, but nothing could have prepared me for immediately feeling like I would do anything to work with this person.”
In the film, she plays Frances, a New York widow and socialite who decides to move to a small apartment in Paris with what’s left of her inheritance. For Pfeiffer, the film offered the opportunity to try something new (despite the fact that she’s taken several varied roles throughout her long career). “I was fascinated by her and this world, and the script and the fantastic writing, and the characters,” the actress told Deadline. “It was unlike anything I had ever read, smart and funny and moving and tragic and all those things. I was just so excited and daunted to play her. It was challenging.”
Today, there is nothing to suggest that Pfeiffer looks to take a break from Hollywood again anytime soon. After starring in a couple of films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as Janet Van Dyne, a.k.a. the Wasp, Pfeiffer is set to reprise her superhero role in the upcoming movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.