Call it whatever, but Michelle Pfeiffer is back

by Roger Moore | Sentinel Movie Critic

Michelle Pfeiffer has been bracing herself for it all summer, that moment when a reporter would use "the c-word" to describe her re-emergence in the movies.

"I thought I'd be hearing that a lot more these past few weeks," she says. "But nobody's saying 'comeback.' It surprises me that I haven't been hearing that, because I would think that, too, about me."

Absent from the screen for five years, she departed with a bang -- a dishy, mean, murderous mom in White Oleander. But one of the most beautiful women in the movies followed that acclaimed villainous turn by practically retiring, raising children with her husband, the TV producer David E. Kelley (Boston Legal).

The phone didn't stop ringing. But Pfeiffer learned to say "no." And how.

"I was reading things, not really finding anything that made me want to go back to work," she says from Beverly Hills. "That's kind of my fall-back position, now: 'No.' I got kind of busy with life. Years went by, and I had to say to myself, 'I'd better go back and see if I even want to do this anymore.'

"It wasn't like I was afraid. But I knew I was rusty. And I found out how rusty. It wasn't like getting back on a bike, I tell you."

But she did get back on that bike. This summer may have begun as the Summer of Shia (LaBeaouf) at the movies, but it is ending with the March of Michelle. Her wicked turn as the ruthlessly hilarious Velma Von Tussle in Hairspray has earned acclaim.

"Pfeiffer plays this vaudeville [rhymes with witch] to the hilt," David Denby wrote in The New Yorker.

Add to that another comically evil character, as an actual witch in the fantasy Stardust, which opens today, and Hollywood is whispering. Elizabeth Snead, a style writer for the Los Angeles Times, notes that designers are already be jockeying to be the one who gets to dress her -- "industry insiders say 2008 may be her awards year."

If she wanted to announce her Hollywood return with a splash, Pfeiffer couldn't have done it better. She may say that being in two of the best-reviewed movies of the summer was "just luck," but there's something canny about her selections.

"It's just as important to wind up in something that you think will be extraordinary as to find a great part to play," she says. "In both of these movies ..... they were going to be something special, and in both cases I was impressed with the cast they'd already lined up, people I respected and wanted to work with."

So she let the fact that John Travolta and Queen Latifah had agreed to do Hairspray take the risk out of signing up, and Robert DeNiro's participation in Stardust tipped the balance.

"He was willing to play this kind of out-there, outrageous character, this pirate captain -- well, who was I to worry?" she says with a laugh.

Pfeiffer, 49, had Fabulous Baker Boys singing chops and dance credibility from Grease 2, way back at the beginning of her career. But her feline turn as Cat Woman in Batman Returns was what director Adam Shankman says made her "the first, the only choice for Velma" on Hairspray.

Stardust director Matthew Vaughn had the trickier job. Even though she had played a spell-binder in The Witches of Eastwick, how do you tell an actress of a certain age, even a gorgeous one, that there's something about her air, her cheekbones, that says witch?

"OK, yeah. I guess I'm believable as a witch, either a singing witch or a witch witch," Pfeiffer laughs. "I don't even want to think about why!

"You can enjoy villains, if they're the least bit humorous. It depends on the movie. For instance, in White Oleander, it wasn't any fun at all. But in Hairspray, because it's a musical and in Stardust, because it's a fantasy ..... the humor and that heightened reality gives you freedom to go places I wouldn't normally want to go."

Getting back to work frightened her. And the roles scared her, which was a big reason she was willing to leave Kelley and their teenaged son and daughter behind to make the films. She hadn't danced since her Grease 2 (1982) days, hadn't sung since The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), "so rusty doesn't begin to cover it." She hired coaches, rehearsed, got the legs and the vocal chords back in shape.

But one thing she didn't bargain for, after 25 years in the business appearing in costume-epic period pieces, thrillers, dramas and romantic comedies, was the makeup. It's not that she needs to hide a lot. But aging a lady from 50ish to 5,000-ish takes some doing.

"The whole prosthetics thing was really shocking," she says. "You think the shock of seeing yourself look ancient is scary, trying being encased in that. I didn't realize until we had the first cosmetic fitting before I started shooting, and it took six hours to put it on, and once it was on I experienced how it would feel while I was on the set. I get a little claustrophobic. Every inch of my skin, it felt, was glued with something. It's not like you can take it off, take a break. Not to make too much of it, but it is an ordeal, and you're encased in it until the end of the day, and it takes another hour to get it all off.

"I thought, right from the start, 'Oh my God, how am I going to do this?' And I just pulled myself together and said, 'You have to. You made a commitment. You can't bail on these people.'"

She didn't bail. And those back-to-back movies are to be followed by I Could Never Be your Woman, a romance due out this fall. But after that, another long layoff?

"My kids are 13 and 14, so I have to go back, after shooting a movie, and get to know them again," she says. "But I realized, working again, that I like it and that I need it. It makes me a better mom, I hope. I finally have an idea about how to balance home and work. So maybe by this winter, after we've gotten completely reacquainted....."

Source: OrlandoSentinel.com