Michelle Pfeiffer marks her return to Hollywood by appearing on the cover of Interview’s April issue.
The three-time Oscar nominee, who last appeared onscreen in 2013’s The Family, gives a rare interview with director Darren Aronofsky, whose movie Mother!, she stars in together with Aronofsky’s girlfriend, Jennifer Lawrence.
She reveals why she dropped off the Hollywood radar except for the occasional low-profile project she engaged in every few years.
“I’ve never lost my love for acting,” Pfeiffer confessed. “I’m a more balanced person, honestly, when I’m working. But I was pretty careful about where I shot, how long I was away, whether or not it worked out with the kids’ schedule. And I got so picky that I was unhireable. And then . . . I don’t know, time just went on . . . I disappeared, yeah.”
Her disappearance from Hollywood also helped her to avoid any interviews, which she hates.
“I was thinking today, ‘Why do I hate being interviewed so much?’” Pfeiffer tells Aronofsky. “And I think it may be that I have this constant fear that I’m a fraud and that I’m going to be found out . . . I started working fairly quickly, and I wasn’t ready.”
The 58-year-old actress explains that despite her flourishing movie career, she doesn’t have “any formal training.”
“I didn’t come from Juilliard. I was just getting by and learning in front of the world. So I’ve always had this feeling that one day they’re going to find out that I’m really a fraud, that I really don’t know what I’m doing.”
Pfeiffer starred as Elvira Hancock opposite Al Pacino in 1983’s Scarface, and recalls being “terrified” while shooting the infamous crime film. “I think I was able to hide behind the tough exterior of that character, who was just sort of tuned out and tuned off, drugged,” she recounts the six-month shoot. “Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and I were really the only females. It was a boys’ club. And it was also the nature of the relationship, for Tony Montana to be very dismissive of my character. So I would go to sleep some nights crying.”
Her breakout performance in Scarface led her to become a true Hollywood actor. She earned three Oscar nominations in a four-year span for Dangerous Liaisons, The Fabulous Baker Boys, and Love Field. She spread her talents across costume (The Age of Innocence), romance (Frankie and Johnny), fantasy (The Witches of Eastwick), and comedy (Married to the Mob) genres. She even managed to receive worldwide compliments for her portrayal of an iconic character, Catwoman, in Batman Returns.
Now that her two children are grown up and out of the house, Pfeiffer has decided to return to the screen. She is set to star in HBO’s upcoming Bernie Madoff movie, The Wizard of Lies, the mysterious Aronofsky project Mother! and the remake of Agatha Christie classic Murder on the Orient Express co-starring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz.
Pfeiffer seems confident that the time is finally right for her onscreen comeback, saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears. I’m more open now, my frame of mind, because I really want to work now, because I can. And these last few years I’ve had some really interesting opportunities.”
