The actor Michelle Pfeiffer insisted on calling ‘Sex Machine’: “I have no recollection whatsoever of this person”
It might be hard to believe, but film sets are, in many ways, just like any other workplace. There are different departments, a regimented hierarchy, and lots of gossiping, and no matter how much the employees love what they do, chances are they’re keeping a close eye on the calendar for their next day off. Within this ecosystem, actors are colleagues, and, like all colleagues, their personalities often clash.
When Michelle Pfeiffer was filming the 1993 Martin Scorsese film The Age of Innocence, there wasn’t so much a clash with another actor as a misunderstanding. In the film, she plays a divorcée in the Gilded Age in New England who falls in love with Daniel Day-Lewis’s character, a respectable solicitor who is engaged to Winona Ryder’s character. Their attraction is taboo in the staid, status-obsessed social circle that they inhabit, they face pressure and judgment from everyone around them.
One of the supporting characters was played by Richard E Grant, who was rapidly becoming a character actor at the time. He had his own struggles on the set, especially when it came to his relationship with Daniel Day-Lewis. After an initially cordial meeting in his trailer, Day-Lewis stopped talking to him and acted as though he didn’t exist. Even when Grant would say hello to him on set in the morning, he would be met with icy silence and zero eye contact. The Withnail and Iactor ultimately realised that the Oscar winner was simply staying in character between takes, which meant that he despised the very sight of his confused co-star.
Another confusing situation on the production that Grant found himself right in the middle of was the fact that Michelle Pfeiffer started referring to him by an unusual nickname that he really did not identify with, at least not in that context. In his published diaries, With Nails, the actor wrote about how, when he’d met the Batman Returns actor in the makeup trailer, he had bombarded her with questions about her career, unable to contain his excitement over meeting a star of her calibre.
She hadn’t responded particularly enthusiastically, probably because she is known by her colleagues for being extremely shy, and having a co-star bubbling over with questions wasn’t the sort of thing she was expecting at that precise moment.
A couple of weeks later, however, Pfeiffer had gotten over the initial discomfort of working with such a vocal fan and was ready to get her own back. “I go into the makeup trailer and Michelle surprises me with this greeting,” Grant recalled, “‘HI, YOU SEX MACHINE,’ and laughs at my gobsmacked face for a change.”
It turned out that Pfeiffer had worked with a makeup artist on the movie The Russia House and who had told her that Grant’s nickname was, in fact, Sex Machine. “I have no recollection whatsoever of this person and reluctantly suggest that it must be some other Richard,” Grant wrote. Pfeiffer was having none of it, and proceeded to call him by the moniker for the duration of the production. As far as nicknames go, one could certainly do worse.
