We turn our gaze to the lovely Michelle Pfeiffer, a movie star who was a throwback to an early era. During her prime in the ’80s, Pfeiffer was smart, funny and fierce in movies like Into the Night, Married to the Mob, The Fabulous Baker Boys—and the less well-known TV movie Natalia Jackson. Also more than a little sexy. We turn to Elizabeth Kaye’s 1990 Movieline profile, “Michelle Pfeiffer: Out of the Past,” for more. First, here’s a brief introduction from Kaye:
Jeremy Irons recently observed that people are more interested in actors than they should, perhaps, be. Nonetheless, we are compelled to learn about the gifted people who move us to tears, who make us laugh, who take up residency in our heads. I’ve written many celebrity profiles, but I was grateful to the excellent and sadly defunct magazine Movieline when they allowed me to write about Michelle Pfeiffer, which is a different undertaking than interviewing her would be. An interview tells us how a particular actor views him or her self. This piece, with quotes from Pfeiffer but written from my own point of view, is about things that even the most self-enamored actors would be reluctant to discuss: it’s about what makes this surpassingly beautiful woman one of the great Hollywood stars. It’s about that the fact her work matters and it attempts to explain why it does.
—Elizabeth Kaye