Michelle Pfeiffer

Pfeiffer received Academy Award nominations as Best Supporting Actress for Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and Best Actress in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) and Love Field (1992). She has had her greatest commercial successes with Batman Returns (1992), What Lies Beneath (2000), and Hairspray (2007). Her other films include Ladyhawke (1985), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Married to the Mob (1988), The Age of Innocence (1993), Wolf (1994), Dangerous Minds (1995), I Am Sam (2001), Cheri (2009), New Year's Eve (2011), and Dark Shadows (2012).

Pfeiffer was born in Santa Ana, California, the second of four children of Richard Pfeiffer, a heating and air-conditioning contractor, and Donna (née Taverna), a housewife. She has one elder brother, Rick (born 1955), and two younger sisters, Dedee Pfeiffer, a television and film actress, and Lori Pfeiffer (born 1965). Her father was of German, Dutch, and Irish descent, and her mother was of Swiss and Swedish ancestry. The family moved to Midway City, where Pfeiffer spent her childhood. Read Less

Pfeiffer was cast against type, as a murdered gangster's widowed moll on the run, in Jonathan Demme's mafia comedy Married to the Mob (1988), opposite Matthew Modine, Dean Stockwell and Mercedes Ruehl. For the role of Angela de Marco, she donned a curly brunette wig and a Brooklyn accent, and received her first Golden Globe Award nomination as Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, beginning a six-year streak of consecutive Best Actress nominations at the Golden Globes. Pfeiffer then appeared as chic restauranteuse Jo Ann Vallenari in Tequila Sunrise (1988) opposite Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell, but experienced creative and personal differences with director Robert Towne, who later described her as the "most difficult" actress he has ever worked with.

At Demme's personal recommendation, Pfeiffer joined the cast of Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liaisons (1988) alongside Glenn Close and John Malkovich, playing the virtuous victim of seduction, Madame Marie de Tourvel. Her performance won her widespread acclaim; Hal Hinson of the Washington Post saw Pfeiffer's role as "the least obvious and the most difficult. Nothing is harder to play than virtue, and Pfeiffer is smart enough not to try. Instead, she embodies it. Her porcelain-skinned beauty, in this regard, is a great asset, and the way it's used makes it seem an aspect of her spirituality." She won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Read Less

Pfeiffer then accepted the roles of Rosie in Amy Heckerling's I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007) with Paul Rudd and Saoirse Ronan, and Linda in Personal Effects (2009), which she starred opposite Ashton Kutcher and Kathy Bates, and was premiered at Iowa City's Englert Theatre. Her next film, an adaptation of Colette's Chéri (2009), reunited her with the director (Stephen Frears) and screenwriter (Christopher Hampton) of Dangerous Liaisons (1988), a film for which all three were nominees for (and, in Hampton's case, recipient of) an Academy Award. Pfeiffer played the role of Léa de Lonval opposite Rupert Friend in the title role, with Kathy Bates as his mother. Chéri premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2009, and received a nomination for the Golden Bear award. The Times of London reviewed the film favorably, describing Hampton's screenplay as a "steady flow of dry quips and acerbic one-liners" and Pfeiffer's performance as "magnetic and subtle, her worldly nonchalance a mask for vulnerability and heartache." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that it was "fascinating to observe how Pfeiffer controls her face and voice during times of painful hurt." Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times praised the "wordless scenes that catch Léa unawares, with the camera alone seeing the despair and regret that she hides from the world. It's the kind of refined, delicate acting Pfeiffer does so well, and it's a further reminder of how much we've missed her since she's been away." Read Less

The film is set for a 2013 release. Read Less