Michelle Pfeiffer names her favourite co-star: “It doesn’t really get much better”
Michelle Pfeiffer was close to derailing her career before it had even begun. The young actor accepted her first leading role in Grease 2, the musical sequel that producers hoped would be as successful as the first film, but instead, it crashed and burned. Pfeiffer was now known as the actor from that terrible movie Grease 2, something that came close to tarnishing her reputation.
Luckily, it was a producer named Martin Bregman who believed that Pfeiffer had what it took to play Elvira Hancock, the glamorous wife of Al Pacino’s Tony Montana in Scarface. Despite Pacino and director Brian De Palma initially resisting – who wanted the lead from Grease 2 to play a mobster’s wife? – she proved that she was a more than capable actor.
Since then, Pfeiffer has starred in many great films, working with filmmakers like John Landis, Jonathan Demme, Mike Nichols, Stephen Frears, and Martin Scorsese. Proving herself in period dramas like Dangerous Liaisons and The Age of Innocence, she picked up an Academy Award nomination for the former, as well as two more nominations for The Fabulous Baker Boys and Love Field.
During her time as an actor, Pfeiffer has had the pleasure of working with some of the biggest stars in the business – while also becoming one herself. She has appeared opposite everyone from Daniel Day-Lewis to Glenn Close, but there is one star she has chosen as her favourite to work with.
In 2013, she starred in a comedy crime movie directed by Luc Besson, The Family, which saw her play the mother of a family involved in the mafia who are forced to go into witness protection. The father of the family was played by none other than gangster movie legend Robert De Niro, whom she absolutely loved getting to act alongside.
While the movie wasn’t exactly well-received – it was far from the heights of Scarface, Goodfellas or Leon – Pfeiffer still had a great time working with De Niro. In an interview with Front Row Features, she revealed, “As an actor, it doesn’t really get much better than working with De Niro. I didn’t know what to expect really. We’d only met on the red carpet, saying ‘cheese,’ for the opening of two films. He was just delightful in every sense of the word. I was really so relieved to see how generous he was with all of us as actors, as well as giving and open. My only regret is that we didn’t have more scenes together because it was really fun.”
The Family wasn’t Pfeiffer or De Niro’s finest hour, but at least she got to work with one of Hollywood’s most iconic and heralded stars. Considering that the movie references Goodfellas and follows a mobster family, she was in good hands working alongside De Niro, who played Jimmy in Scorsese’s epic film, as well as appearing in other gangster movies like The Godfather Part II, Once Upon A Time in America, and The Untouchables. Sadly though, this didn’t stop the film from becoming a critical flop.
