Michelle Pfeiffer’s complicated relationship with acting: “I deserve to be made fun of”
When any actor gets into show business, the ideal scenario is that they are confident in their abilities. If that isn’t the case, and they let their anxieties get the better of them, Hollywood can become a very cutthroat place. Interestingly, though, some of the biggest stars in the movie business have managed to forge thriving careers while being riddled with insecurity at all times. Michelle Pfeiffer is a great example of this, as she is a genuine A-lister who has always had a complicated relationship with her profession. So much so, in fact, that it took her two decades to stop shaking uncontrollably on the first day of any production.
By the time Pfeiffer became one of the highest-paid female stars in Hollywood in the 1990s, she was already a three-time Academy Award nominee and a significant box-office draw. Her first two nominations came consecutively for 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons and 1989’s The Fabulous Baker Boys, before she added her third for 1992’s Love Field. That same year, she delivered an iconic performance as Catwoman in Batman Returns and followed that up by working with Martin Scorsese in The Age of Innocence. A few years later, she scored a massive hit with 1995’s Dangerous Minds.
Despite all this, though, nothing could convince Pfeiffer that she was actually a good actress who deserved her success. In fact, she is adamant she has always felt like an imposter in Hollywood, once telling Vanity Fair, “I didn’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.”
This debilitating insecurity manifested badly while she was playing her breakthrough role of Elvira on the set of 1982’s Scarface. She was certain she was about to be fired the whole way through production and couldn’t help feeling intimidated by the “group of incredibly seasoned actors” she was working with. It also didn’t help that there was only one other woman in the primary cast, with whom she never actually shot any scenes. “I would go to bed every night crying,” she admitted.
Pfeiffer’s deep-seated anxieties would often manifest in crippling indecision when it came time to commit to projects. She called it her “normal torture dance, whether or not I should do it,” and over the years, she agonised so long over decisions and tried to quit so many productions before cameras rolled that her agents and managers nicknamed her ‘Dr No.’ “I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I can’t possibly do this for some crazy reason,” she explained. “Some insurmountable thing that’s really not insurmountable, and my agents always see it coming.”
Then, when all else failed, and Pfeiffer actually had to make a movie, she would obsess over dailies, convincing herself that she was acting in a different picture than everyone else. She would also subject her collaborators to a barrage of questions and ideas, which was mostly taken in the spirit it was meant but sometimes led to frustrated co-stars and directors screaming at her. “I’ve been yelled at more than once,” she confessed, claiming that she yelled back a few times. “Other times,” she admitted, “I’d just go off and cry.”
Ultimately, it took 20 long years for Pfeiffer to stop torturing herself. She admitted that while she was caught up in the worst of it, she sometimes felt, “I deserve to be made fun of,” but over time, she was able to find ways to cope with her insecurities. However, she acknowledged, “I’ve always had this very love-hate relationship with acting.”
